https://sg.yahoo.com/news/zelensky-fires-back-trump-living-125949199.html
Zelensky Fires Back at Trump: He’s Living in a ‘Bubble’ of BS
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lamented Wednesday that his American counterpart lives in a “disinformation bubble.”
His remark came a day after President Donald Trump falsely accused Ukraine of starting its ongoing conflict with Russia and baselessly claimed Zelensky’s approval rating was “down at four percent.”
“Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect to him as the leader of a nation that we greatly respect... is living in this disinformation bubble,” the Ukrainian leader told reporters.
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday, Trump—who has opened direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine—appeared to echo Kremlin efforts to sow doubt about Zelensky’s legitimacy in office.
“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law,” Trump told reporters.
He did not mention that the Ukrainian constitution bars elections during periods of martial law, which was declared after Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Trump also blamed Ukraine for suffering the invasion at the hands of Russia, saying: “You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
According to experts and intergovernmental bodies, Putin’s actions to launch an invasion—which led to the deaths of thousands of civilians—violated international law.
Kremlin propagandists have worked to paint Zelensky as an illegitimate president. Trump insisted this has not influenced his musing about a Ukrainian election: “That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me.”
Trump’s claim about Zelensky’s approval ratings was also not grounded in reality.
A poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), published Wednesday and taken earlier this month, found that 57 percent of Ukrainians said they trust Zelensky.
“If some international partners and allies are worried about the legitimacy of the president in the context of possible peace negotiations and consider it appropriate to insist on elections, then from the point of view of Ukrainian citizens themselves, there are no problems with this,” Anton Hrushetskyi, the executive director of KIIS, told the Kyiv Independent.
Trump, who said he may meet Putin later this month, dispatched a delegation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to meet behind closed doors with envoys led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Saudi Arabia on Monday.
Following the talks, the State Department said the two sides agreed to “begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.”
Lavrov, a longtime Putin ally, sounded enthusiastic on Wednesday, telling the State Duma: “We have begun to move away from the brink of the abyss where our relations were led by the administration of [former President Joe] Biden, but these are only the first steps.”
The Trump administration’s direct talks with Russia have set off alarm bells in Kyiv and European capitals, where leaders shut out from negotiations have fretted Trump is poised to cut a deal with Russia that would threaten security and stability in Ukraine and Europe.
Bloomberg News reported that Rubio assured U.S. allies in Europe on a call Tuesday that his country plans to keep sanctions on Russia in place until a deal is reached.
Zelensky has said his country will not recognize the outcome of talks that do not bring Ukrainian negotiators to the table.
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