If Zelensky wants a seat at peace talks, he should refresh his democratic mandate by holding now long-delayed elections, Trump said.
The post Trump Says Price of Peace May be Fresh Ukrainian Elections, Zelensky Accuses President of ‘Disinformation’ appeared first on Breitbart.
If Ukraine wants a seat at the peace talks it should refresh the democratic mandate of its presidency by holding fresh elections, President Donald Trump suggested as he reacted to the first round of U.S.-Russia peace negotiations on Tuesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump stated in comments at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening that the Ukrainian people should get a say in whether and how the war against the Russian invasion ends, with elections having long been delayed by the Zelensky government. His comments came after the first round of U.S.-Russian peace talks closed with both sides walking away, apparently satisfied with progress.
Speaking from his Florida home, Trump noted that Ukraine’s leadership had reacted very negatively to being excluded from the enabling talks and said that if they wanted to be included in the future, the Ukrainian people themselves should be consulted.
President Trump said: “Well, we have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine. Where we have martial law, martial law essentially, in Ukraine, where the leader — I hate to say it — he’s down to four per cent approval rating. It’s a country that’s been blown to smithereens. Most of the cities are laying on their side.
“…I would say that if they want a seat at the table, wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve had an election’. That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.”
Ukrainian state media immediately shot back at President Trump after he said Zelensky’s approval rating was very low — perhaps a tacit implication that President Trump believes an election as a price for a peace deal actually means the end of Zelensky’s leadership — insisting that actually, Zelensky is riding high in the polls.
President Zelensky himself also spoke out against Trump, accusing him of repeating Russian propaganda talking points. Indeed, Moscow has repeatedly referred to Ukraine’s delayed elections as proof of their claims that Kyiv is an illegitimate fascist state.
Saying if Trump wants to replace him immediately “that won’t happen”, Zelensky expressed his opinion that the U.S. leadership was being fed false information by the Kremlin and believing it.
He said: “Unfortunately, President Trump, whom we have great respect for as a leader of the American people, whom we greatly respect and who constantly supports us, lives in this disinformation space”.
Ukraine’s state of war makes understanding the full truth of this matter difficult, if not impossible. Martial law banned all opposition parties, and some opposition politicians, branded “traitors” and “collaborators” by the government, have even been assassinated in the course of the conflict. Furthermore, millions of Ukrainians are abroad as refugees and may not be easy to reach for pollsters to survey.
For all these reasons, actually holding fresh elections quickly may be difficult, but not impossible. Ukrainians abroad could vote through its global network of embassies, but persuading Zelensky to again allow the existence of a political opposition to campaign for that election — particularly given that some of the banned Ukrainian parties that existed in the pre-war parliament in Kyiv are avowedly pro-Russian — may be more of a challenge.
Ukraine last held national elections in 2019, and they were due to be held again in 2024 for both the parliament and the presidency. The present position of the Zelensky administration is that there will be no new elections until after the war is over, as the conflict makes holding a fair election impossible.
Broad swathes of the European media angrily responded to other Trump comments made on Tuesday, selectively reporting lines that made it seem clear the President blamed Ukraine for starting the war in the first place. That is not clear, but at the least, President Trump did blame Ukraine for not stopping the war as soon as it started by suing for peace and making a deal.
Ukraine has repeatedly denied reported claims that any such peace discussions took place back in 2022 and that the United Kingdom, under Boris Johnson, influenced them to keep fighting at all costs.
Trump said: “You’ve been there for three years, you should have ended it, you should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal with Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished”.
