There may come a day when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regrets taking the bait and, at what may be the conclusion of three years of fighting Russia, being drawn into a verbal war with U.S. President Donald Trump. Over the last few days, Trump has called Zelensky a dictator who started the war, and Zelensky has said that Trump is “caught in a web of disinformation.”
As negotiations are being prepared, and Zelensky needs more than ever to be in the shadow of Trump’s goodwill, this may be the worst time to become entrenched as an enemy of Trump. Vice President J.D. Vance said that Zelensky has been getting “bad advice,” adding “[t]he idea that Zelensky is going to change the president’s mind by badmouthing him in public media…everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration.”
The war of words began with Trump scolding Zelensky on his handling of the war, saying Ukraine “should have never started it. You could have made a deal.” Zelensky responded that he “would like to have more truth with the Trump team.”
Trump is wrong about the first point and right about the second. The beginning of the war in Ukraine is complex, and its roots go back many years before the Russian invasion. Despite Western claims of an unprovoked war, Russia was the recipient of multiple serious provocations. Requests for their security concerns to be addressed with negotiations went ignored. NATO broke its promise and continued its expansion east to Russia’s borders, even promising that Ukraine’s path to membership was irreversible. Ethnic Russians who were citizens of Ukraine were being threatened and their rights were being revoked. 60,000 elite Ukrainian troops massed on the eastern border with Donbas and Ukrainian artillery shelling into the Donbas had dramatically increased. There was genuine alarm in Russia that Ukraine was about to invade the Donbas. But it was Russia that illegally invaded Ukraine. The West provoked Russia, but Russia attacked Ukraine. On this, Trump is wrong.
But he is not wrong that Ukraine could have made a deal. He is wrong to ignore that before Ukraine could have made a deal, the United States and NATO could have made a deal instead of ignoring overtures by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of the war to negotiate a new security architecture and taking discussions of NATO membership for Ukraine off the table.
But he is not wrong that Ukraine had an opportunity to pursue promising diplomatic talks to end the war in its very early days before there was so much loss of life. There can be no doubt that the historical record reveals that, in the early months of the war, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators had arrived at a draft agreement and that there was a promising diplomatic path to ending the war that should, at least, have been further explored. Because Ukraine walked away from the negotiating table and pursued, instead, the path of war, Trump is not wrong to say that the Ukrainian leadership “could have made a deal” but, instead, “allowed a war to go on.”
But Trump is wrong to place the blame fully on Zelensky. If not for American and British pressure to walk away from the negotiating table, Zelensky may well have stayed at the table. It was the West who told Zelensky that Putin “should not be negotiated with” and that the United States, the United Kingdom and their allies “would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.”
When Zelensky accused Trump of believing the false information he was being fed by Russia and said he “would like to have more truth” from Trump, the U.S. president fired back with three accusations against Zelensky. He said that Zelensky “talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start,” that he is “A Dictator,” and that he is “very low in Ukrainian Polls.”
This is not the first time Trump has accused Zelensky of talking America into spending billions on Ukraine. He has previously complained that “[e]very time Zelensky comes to the United States he walks away with $100 billion, I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth.”
Trump’s claim that Zelensky talked the United States into spending money in Ukraine is not wholly true and is unfair. When the West discouraged Zelensky from negotiating with Russia in the early days of the war, they promised that, if instead of negotiating they would instead fight Russia, then they could count on whatever money and military aid they need for as long as they need it. It was not Zelensky who asked the United States for money; it was the United States who offered it.
Trump’s next charge is that Zelensky is a dictator. Though it is premature to assess that Zelensky is a dictator, he has been called one by those who work most closely with him. The former Minister of Internal Affairs and ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko told Germany’s Die Welt that, in a supposedly democratic Ukraine, “Zelensky rules as a sole decision-making autocrat” who “makes decisions alone.”
Trump called Zelensky “A Dictator without Elections.” Zelensky’s term in office came to an end on May 20, 2024. This is a concern for Russia who wonders if Zelensky has a mandate to sign any agreements. But the lack of elections may not justify Trump’s conclusion that Zelensky is a dictator. Elections are prohibited by Ukrainian law, although not by its constitution, in periods of martial law. Zelensky has ruled out holding them because, under the circumstances, elections would be a challenge—though many countries have held elections at time of war—and because of fear of Russian interference. But, in this, Zelensky seems to have support among Ukrainians, 49% of whom say they strongly oppose holding elections during the war and 18% of whom rather oppose it. The polling may suffer from methodological problems since it excluded those in the eastern regions and those who have left Ukraine. And the numbers may have changed in the year since that poll was taken.
But, though Trump may be wrong in his reason for calling Zelensky a dictator, he may not turn out to be wholly wrong in his conclusion. Zelensky has acted in ways that seem inconsistent with democracy. Zelensky has signed legislation that banned opposition parties, limited freedom of the press and free speech, and limited religious freedom and linguistic and cultural rights.
Trump’s final attack on Zelensky is that he is “very low in Ukrainian Polls.” Trump had previously pegged that low approval rating at 4%. It is not clear where Trump came up with his 4% figure, but it is not true. Though it did not ask about approval, one recent poll found that 57% of Ukrainians trust Zelensky. Trust is not the same as approval, and that number may actually be lower since the sample group did not include people living in territories controlled by Russia.
But if Trump is wrong by a lot on Zelensky’s numbers, he is not wrong that Zelensky’s popularity is on the decline in Ukraine. A Gallup poll taken near the end of 2024 shows that Zelensky’s approval rating has fallen as the war has gone on. At the start of the war, it was at 84%. It is now at 60%. Again, the numbers may be a little optimistic, since the poll excluded people in Russian occupied territory.
The report on the Gallup poll points out that Zelensky remains more popular than his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko. But more popular than Poroshenko may be a pretty low bar. By the middle of his term in office, only 13.7% of Ukrainians trusted the latter, and nearly 50% of Ukrainians said they wouldn’t vote for him under any circumstances. He received only 24% of the vote in the run off against Zelensky in 2019.
The real threat to Zelensky comes from the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valery Zaluzhny. Despite Zelensky’s boastful response to Trump that “[i]f anyone wants to replace me right now, then it just isn’t going to happen,” polling shows that it could happen. Internal polling seen by The Economist suggests that Zelensky “would lose a future election by 30% to 65% to Valery Zaluzhny.” Worse for Zelensky is that sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko, of Freie Universität Berlin, told me that some readings of polls show that he would probably also lose to Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.
Perhaps fearing Poroshenko, who heads the largest opposition party in Ukraine’s parliament, Zelensky recently imposed sanctions on him for “national security” reasons. Poroshenko says the Zelensky’s move is politically motivated. Others agree; Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden and the current co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, warned that “To impose sanctions on Poroshenko will be seen as pure political revenge.”
Perhaps also because he feared Zaluzhny, Zelensky exiled the fired general to the Ukrainian embassy in London. Moves like these that punish and sideline political rivals, were they to happen in certain other countries, might be offered in evidence by the United States of illegitimate elections and a lack of democracy.
If the first casualty of war is truth, it may be the first casualty of this verbal war between Trump and Zelensky too. Much of what has been said is not entirely true. But some of it is not entirely false either. Either way, a verbal war between Trump and Zelensky coming at the close of the war between Russia and Ukraine could not be worse timing for the people of Ukraine, who are always the ones to pay.
