Vice President J.D. Vance, who met Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week at the Munich Security Conference, said Wednesday that Ukraine's leader is making a mistake by criticizing President Donald Trump, who is seeking a rapid end to the nearly three-year-old war with Russia.
Trump and Zelenskyy traded barbs Wednesday, with Trump calling out Ukraine's president on Truth Social for not holding elections, saying "the only thing he was good at was playing [Joe] Biden 'like a fiddle,'" and calling him a "Dictator without elections." Trump also on Tuesday told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that Ukraine "should have never started" the war, which will mark its third anniversary on Monday, and "could have made a deal" to end it.
Zelenskyy, who was frustrated that the U.S. started peace talks with Russia first, responded Wednesday that Trump was living in a Russian-made "disinformation space." His comments came shortly before he was to meet in Kyiv with retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump's special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.
"The idea that Zelenskyy 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," Vance told the Daily Mail from his office in the west wing of the White House.
Vance said Zelenskyy has been getting bad advice on how to deal with the Trump administration after being told for the past three years by the Biden administration that he could do no wrong.
"We obviously love the Ukrainian people," Vance said. "We admire the bravery of the soldiers, but we obviously think that this war needs to come to a rapid close.
"That is the policy of the president of the United States. It is not based on Russian disinformation. It's based on the fact that Donald Trump, I think, knows a lot about geopolitics and has a very strong view, and has had a strong view for a very long time."
Zelenskyy called out Trump during a news conference Wednesday morning in Kyiv, a day after U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudia Arabia to start peace negotiations.
"Unfortunately, President Trump — I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us — unfortunately, lives in this disinformation space," he said, according to the Daily Mail.
Zelenskyy told Newsmax on Friday that Trump "has [to] make a deal, not with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, with us, and then pressure Putin. Because any negotiations without us, we will never accept because the war is in Ukraine, not somewhere [else]."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Saudi Arabia that any final agreement must be acceptable to Ukraine and Europe, as well as Russia.