Donald Trump has blamed Volodymyr Zelensky for “allowing” the war with Russia to begin in a fresh swipe at the Ukrainian president.
Mr Trump said his Ukrainian counterpart and Joe Biden, the former US president, “did a horrible job” of preventing the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow and called for an end to the war “fast”.
The US president told his followers on Truth Social, “President Zelenskyy and Crooked Joe Biden did a horrible job allowing this travesty to begin. There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. That is the past. Now we have to get it to stop and fast.”
His comments come a month after the two leaders clashed in a televised shouting match in the Oval Office.
The extraordinary row left the prospects of a peace deal hanging by a thread after Mr Trump told Mr Zelensky to “come back when you’re ready for peace” and threatened to withdraw US military aid unless Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire.
Relations have since improved, but overnight, Mr Trump appeared to defend Vladimir Putin for a Russian missile strike on the city of Sumy, which killed 34 people and injured 100 more, saying he believed it was a “mistake”.
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