President Trump on Tuesday appeared to blame Ukraine’s leaders for the three-year war with Russia, arguing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should have never started it.”
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after massing troops on the border and demanding a ban on Ukraine ever joining the NATO alliance. The invasion took place nearly a decade after Russia took over Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Trump vowed to end the war during his presidential campaign and on Tuesday repeated his claim that the war would never have started if he had been president. He spoke after U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia without Ukraine officials.
“I think I have the power to end this war. And I think it’s going very well,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on the heels of the meeting between U.S. and Russian officials.
“But today I heard, ‘Oh, well we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump continued. “You should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way.”
Trump went on to rail against former President Biden as “so pathetic” before again criticizing Zelensky.
“Look, you have leadership — and I like him personally. He’s fine. But I don’t care about personally. I care about getting the job done. You have leadership now that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States.”
Trump’s comments came after three of his senior administration officials met with their Russian counterparts earlier Tuesday in Saudi Arabia to discuss mending relations between the two powers and ending the war in Ukraine. The meeting marked a dramatic shift in U.S.-Russia relations.
Zelensky expressed frustration that Ukrainian representatives were not part of the talks.
“Decisions on how to end the war in Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine, nor can any conditions be imposed,” Zelensky said during a visit to Turkey on Tuesday. “We were not invited to this Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia. It was a surprise for us, I think for many others as well.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Saudi Arabia that any final agreement would have to be acceptable to Ukraine and Europe, as well as Russia.
Trump has over the past week moved forward with his desire to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, which began three years ago when Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor.
Trump last week spoke first with Russian President Vladimir Putin about starting peace negotiations, then with Zelensky. Trump has talked bout holding a face-to-face meeting with Putin in the near future.
While Trump has stressed he wants an end to the killing, he and some administration officials have made comments in the past week that have alarmed allies and some lawmakers.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it “unrealistic” for Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders as part of a ceasefire agreement with Russia or to gain NATO membership.
Trump called it an “interesting question” when asked if he viewed Ukraine as an equal member of the peace negotiations without answering directly.
“I think they have to make peace,” Trump said last week. “Their people are being killed, and I think they have to make peace. I said that was not a good war to go into, and I think they have to make peace. That’s what I think.”
