(Reuters) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
WASHINGTON\/KYIV, Feb 19 – U.S. President Donald Trump denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “dictator” on Wednesday and warned he had to move quickly to secure peace or risk losing his country, deepening a feud between the two leaders that has alarmed European officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The extraordinary attacks – a day after Trump claimed Ukraine was to blame for Russia’s 2022 invasion – heightened concerns among U.S. allies in Europe that Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict could benefit Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Less than a month into his presidency, Trump has upended U.S. policy<\/a> on the war, ending a campaign to isolate Russia with a Trump-Putin phone call and talks between senior U.S. and Russian officials that have sidelined Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Trump wrote on social media, using an alternate spelling for the Ukrainian president’s name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In response, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said no one could force his country to give in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We will defend our right to exist,” Sybiha said on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zelenskiy’s five-year term was supposed to end in 2024, but presidential and parliamentary elections cannot be held under martial law, which Ukraine imposed in February 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump’s outburst followed Zelenskiy’s comments on Tuesday that the U.S. president was parroting Russian disinformation when he asserted that Ukraine “should never have started<\/a>” the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion<\/a> three years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday warned Zelenskiy against attacking Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The idea that Zelenskiy 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 said in his West Wing office, the Daily Mail reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Reuters) WASHINGTON\/KYIV, Feb 19 – U.S. President Donald Trump denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “dictator” on Wednesday and warned he had to move quickly to secure peace or risk losing his country, deepening a feud between the two leaders that has alarmed European officials. The extraordinary attacks – a day after Trump claimed Ukraine was to blame for Russia’s 2022 invasion – heightened concerns among U.S. allies in Europe that Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict could benefit Moscow. Less than a month into his presidency, Trump has upended U.S. policy on the war, ending a campaign to isolate… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45162,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45160\/revisions\/45162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}