Trump hits out at Zelensky for not making deal to end war with Russia

Former US President Donald Trump hit out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday for “refusing to make a deal” with Russia in one of his most scathing attacks on the Ukrainian leader’s handling of the war to date.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, Trump questioned why the US continued to give “billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal” and suggested that Ukraine should have “given up a little bit” before Moscow’s full-scale invasion to prevent the outbreak of war.

“There was no deal that he could have made that wouldn’t have been better than the situation you have right now. You have a country that has been obliterated, not possible to be rebuilt”, Trump said, adding that Ukraine was “gone” after two and a half years of Russian attacks.

He also accused the Ukrainian president of casting “nasty little aspersions” on him, in an apparent reference to an interview with The New Yorker on Sunday in which Zelensky said Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how”.

The Republican presidential hopeful had earlier negatively referred to Zelensky as the “greatest salesman on Earth” as he continued to ramp up his criticism of Kyiv during the Ukrainian leader’s visit to the US to present his “victory plan” to senior American officials this week.

On Thursday, Zelensky is scheduled to visit the White House to meet with US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

While Zelensky’s administration had previously indicated that he would also meet with Trump during his visit to Washington, a Trump campaign official told the Associated Press on Wednesday that no such meeting had been scheduled between the two.