Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the Ukrainian president suggested that an end to the war with Russia could be “very, very far away”. In a social media post on Monday, the US president called it “the worst statement” that could have been made by Zelenskyy, adding that America would not “put up with it for much longer”.
Trump repeated his claim that Zelenskyy does not want peace as long as he has US backing, and said European leaders had made clear they could not act without Washington. He later told reporters that the Ukrainian president “won’t be around very long” unless he agrees to a deal on US terms, insisting that an agreement “could be made very fast”.
The remarks came amid reports that the Trump administration was drawing up plans to restore ties with Russia and lift sanctions on the Kremlin. The state and treasury departments were said to have been tasked with identifying sanctions that could be eased as part of broader diplomatic and economic talks. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US had stopped financing new weapons sales to Ukraine and was considering freezing shipments from US stockpiles, though Trump denied discussing a halt to military aid, saying “we’ll see what happens”.
Meanwhile, France proposed a partial one-month truce covering air, sea and energy infrastructure. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said such a truce would reveal whether Vladimir Putin was acting in good faith and gauge his attitude to “real peace negotiations”. The proposal follows a summit of European leaders in London, where they rallied around Ukraine amid growing uncertainty over US backing.
Zelenskyy, in the interview that prompted Trump’s reaction, expressed optimism about Ukraine’s partnership with the US, saying the relationship would continue because it was “more than an occasional relationship”. His comments came after a heated Oval Office exchange last week, in which Trump accused him of “gambling with” a third world war. Sir Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron have been seeking to act as intermediaries between Kyiv and the White House as tensions continue to mount.
