After U.S. President Donald Trump had lashed out at Ukraine’s leader on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was preparing for a meeting on Thursday with Trump's envoy in Kyiv to work toward "a lasting peace" with Russia.
"It is crucial for us that the meeting and our overall cooperation with America be constructive," Zelenskyy said in his evening address to the nation. "Together with America and Europe, peace can be more secure, and that is our goal."
Earlier in the day, Trump and Zelenskyy traded words, with the U.S. president calling Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections," and Zelenskyy accusing Trump of living in a Russian-influenced "disinformation space."
With settlement of Russia’s three-year war on Ukraine hanging in the balance, Trump took to his Truth Social media platform to attack the Kyiv leader, who has expressed the fear that the U.S. leader is trying to end the war on terms more favorable to Moscow than Kyiv.
Trump accused Zelenskyy of refusing to hold elections in Ukraine, which had been scheduled for April 2024 but were delayed after Russia invaded in 2022, three years ago next week.
Trump disparaged Zelenskyy as "a modestly successful comedian" who "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, but a War that he, without the U.S. and "TRUMP," will never be able to settle."
The U.S. leader, who declined last year during a political debate to say he wanted Ukraine to win the war, said "the only thing [Zelenskyy] was good at was playing [former U.S. President Joe] Biden 'like a fiddle'" for more military assistance.
"I love Ukraine," Trump said, "but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues….."
Trump’s assessment of Zelenskyy came after the Ukrainian leader this week expressed his anger at Ukraine’s exclusion from Tuesday’s high-level U.S.-Russian diplomatic talks in Saudi Arabia, where the two countries after more than four hours of discussions said they had agreed to meet again soon on how to end the war.
Earlier, Trump on Tuesday scoffed at Zelenskyy’s complaint about not being invited to the talks in Riyadh headed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
"Today I heard, 'Well, we weren’t invited.' Well, you’ve been there for three years," Trump said of Ukraine’s leaders, whom he accused of starting the war even though it was Russia that invaded Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine has wanted to end the war "from the very first second. I am confident that we will end it, and with a lasting peace."
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday he was pleased with the outcome of the Riyadh talks with the U.S. but said his country needs to build trust with Washington before the war can be resolved.
Putin rated the discussions "highly," declaring that they were a "first step" in improving contentious relations between Moscow and Washington.
But he added, "It is impossible to solve many issues, including the Ukrainian crisis, without increasing the level of trust between Russia and the United States."
Putin said in televised remarks that he would like to hold a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, "but it needs to be prepared so that it brings results."
The Rubio-Lavrov talks were the first significant discussions between the two superpowers in more than three years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S.-led Western effort to arm Kyiv’s forces to fend off the attack.
"I was briefed [on the talks]. I rate them highly, there are results," Putin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying at a drone factory in Saint Petersburg. "In my opinion, we made the first step to restore work in various areas of mutual interests."
Neither Ukrainian nor European officials were at the table in a Saudi palace for the talks, but the U.S. said they would be involved in future negotiations to try to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Russia failed to take over all of Ukraine in the first stages of the war but now controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory. Zelenskyy has said repeatedly his country will not accept a dictated U.S.-Russian dictated settlement of the conflict.
While Biden provided tens of billions of dollars in arms for Kyiv, Trump has pushed for a fast end to the Moscow-initiated war.
Speaking ahead of talks with Trump's Ukraine envoy in Kyiv, Zelenskyy told Ukrainian TV, "President Trump ... unfortunately lives in this disinformation space."
The envoy, Gen. Keith Kellogg, said the United States understands the need for security guarantees for Ukraine in any negotiated end to the war.
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Kellogg, who arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday, said his mission was to hear the concerns of Ukrainian leaders and then relay them to Trump.
Kellogg said the United States wants the war in Ukraine to end, saying it would be good for the region and the world.
Zelenskyy told reporters ahead of the meeting with Kellogg that while U.S. officials have said there will be no U.S. troops deployed as part of any potential post-war peacekeeping mission, there are still other ways it can help, such as providing air defense systems.
"You don't want boots on the ground, you don't want NATO," Zelenskyy said. "OK, can we have Patriots? Enough Patriots?"
The discussions in Kyiv came amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts focused on the war, including French President Emmanuel Macron hosting European leaders Wednesday for a second round of talks about the conflict and European support for Ukraine. Kellogg also met earlier this week with European leaders.
Rubio said Tuesday after meeting with Lavrov that both Ukraine and Russia would have to make concessions to achieve peace.
“The goal is to bring an end to this conflict in a way that's fair, enduring, sustainable and acceptable to all parties involved," Rubio told reporters.
Zelenskyy postponed a trip to Saudi Arabia that had been scheduled for this week, suggesting that he wanted to avoid his visit being linked to the U.S.-Russia talks.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement after the Riyadh talks that the U.S. and Russia agreed to "appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible." Bruce characterized the meeting as "an important step forward" toward peace.
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
