The Republican presidential candidate says even the “worst deal” would be better than the current level of death and destruction.
Donald Trump has criticised Volodymyr Zelenskyy for failing to negotiate with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, saying that even the “worst deal” would be better than the current level of death and destruction.
Speaking at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump said Ukraine could never replace its “many dead people” and towns and cities destroyed in the war.
“Those cities no longer exist. They no longer exist, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal, Zelenskyy. There was no deal he could have made that wouldn’t have been better than the situation you have now,” Trump told his supporters.
“They have a country that has been devastated and cannot be rebuilt. It will take hundreds of years to rebuild it, and there is not enough money to rebuild it even if everyone were to unite.”
“If they had made a bad deal, it would have been a lot better,” Trump said.
“They would have given up a little, and everyone would still be alive, every building would have been built and every tower would have aged another 2,000 years.”
Trump also accused Zelenskyy of “making nasty little digs at” him, an apparent reference to an interview published in The New Yorker on Sunday in which the Ukrainian leader said the Republican nominee “doesn’t really know how to stop the war, even if he thinks he knows how.”
Zelenskyy also described Trump’s running mate JD Vance as “too radical” after the Ohio senator said last week that “everything will be on the table” when asked during a press conference whether kyiv should cede land in exchange for a ceasefire.
Trump's comments, which marked his most explicit criticism of the Ukrainian leader and his handling of the war so far, came hours after Zelenskyy urged world leaders not to settle for “a pause” in the conflict instead of a “real and just peace.”
Zelenskyy called for solidarity at the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday as he sought to rally support for his 2022 “peace formula” that calls for the expulsion of all Russian forces from Ukraine.
Trump has repeatedly said he would end the war almost immediately, though he has provided few details.
During an interview on the Lex Friedman Podcast earlier this month, Trump said he had a “very demanding plan” to resolve the conflict, but that he could not reveal the details before implementing it.
