U.S. president Donald Trump told reporters that his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky is responsible for the conflict. The statement followed Russia’s deadly Palm Sunday attack on the city of Sumy.
These comments came as Trump shared a White House platform with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, declaring “You don’t want to confront someone 20 times bigger.” Asked about the assault on Sumy, Trump said it was “terrible” and that he was told Russia had “made a mistake”:
Millions of people dead because of three people. Let’s say Putin number one, let’s say [Joe] Biden who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky.
As parts of the conversation unleashed the self-appointed fact-checkers—seizing on the mistakenly high death toll Trump quoted—U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff was ready to report back on his Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, with more than four hours spent focused on achieving a peace deal.
Previously, Zelensky invited Trump to visit war-torn Ukraine before agreeing to any settlement.
