Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited President Donald Trump to visit the war-torn country in a bid to convince him to embrace Ukraine’s view of its war with Russia.
During an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, which was released over the weekend, Zelensky asked Trump to put a pause on high-level negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. He suggested the United States is pandering to pro-Russian narratives as it seeks to build a peace deal between the two countries. Zelensky requested that Trump “see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead” in Ukraine “to understand what Putin did” before making “any kind of decisions” on a peace deal.
“Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” Zelensky said. “And we will not prepare anything. It will not be theater, with preparing actors in the streets and the [city] center. We don’t do this. We don’t need it. You can go exactly where you want, in any city which has been under attack.”
“Come, look, and then let’s move with a plan for how to finish the war,” he continued. “You will understand with whom you have a deal. You will understand what Putin did. What I said to them [the White House], just to come and to understand.”
Zelensky issued a similar invitation for Trump to visit Ukraine in November 2023. However, his latest request came after the U.S. overhauled its approach to the war. Under Trump’s leadership, the White House ended most aid to Kyiv. Instead. it has promoted efforts to end the conflict compared to the Biden administration’s tactic of supplying Zelensky with billions of dollars in aid as fuel for Ukraine’s war against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump reiterated his position in a Truth Social post on Monday, which came after a Russian missile strike on Ukraine killed 34 people. The president called the “whole war” a “horrible thing,” saying he was told Russia made “a mistake.”
“…[I] AM WORKING DILIGENTLY TO GET THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION TO STOP,” Trump said on Truth Social. “President Zelenskyy and Crooked Joe Biden did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin. There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. But that is the past. Now we have to get it to STOP, AND FAST.”
During the 60 Minutes interview, Zelensky characterized the U.S.’s policy shifts as favoring Russian propaganda. He cited a raucous meeting he held with Trump in the Oval Office in February, during which Vice President JD Vance and Trump accused Ukraine of taking advantage of the U.S.’s financial generosity and thwarting diplomatic efforts to end the war.
“I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S.,” Zelensky said Friday. “How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war? This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia’s information policy on America, on U.S. politics, and U.S. politicians.”
During the White House meeting in February, Vance told Zelensky, “What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy … that’s what President Trump is doing.”
Zelensky responded that Putin broke previous ceasefires, “killed our people, and … didn’t exchange prisoners.”
“What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about? What do you mean?” Zelensky asked.
“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country,” Vance replied.
“Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems,” Vance rebuked Zelensky. “You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”
Zelensky lamented during his CBS appearance over the “shift in tone” and “shift in reality” from the U.S.
“I don’t want to engage in the altered reality that is being presented to me,” he said. “First and foremost, we did not launch an attack [to start the war]. It seems to me that the Vice President is somehow justifying Putin’s actions. I tried to explain, ‘You can’t look for something in the middle. There is an aggressor, and there is a victim.’ The Russians are the aggressor, and we are the victim.”
WITKOFF MEETS PUTIN IN RUSSIA AS TRUMP SAYS TO ‘GET MOVING’ ON PEACE DEAL’
During comments to the press in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said the war in Ukraine “should have never been allowed to start.”
“Biden could have stopped it, and Zelensky could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it,” he said. “Everybody’s to blame.”
