Trump says Ukraine should get a new president as he blames Zelenskyy for US diesel prices

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, suggesting Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not done enough to end his country’s war with Russia and blaming him for high diesel prices in the U.S.

“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump said.

The president, who on Friday struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Russia in an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, has been urging Zelenskyy for weeks to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. He has also sought to blame record U.S. diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has elevated world energy prices.

“He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel,” Trump said, before departing for Tennessee where he was set to rally Republican voters.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted last month and published Oct. 1 found that Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran, and blame him for higher prices.

Trump also suggested that if he had been U.S. president in 2022, “that war would have never started. There was no reason that that war with Ukraine and Russia started. It started due to incompetence.”

Zelenskyy has “lost 30% of your country and you’ve had over a million people go between the two of them, over 2 million people killed. That’s a war that should have never started. And I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president,” Trump said.

Independent estimates are that about 20% of Ukraine’s territory is under Russian control. British defense officials recently estimated that about half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in the war; there are no reliable recent estimates about how many Ukrainians have died.

20 people killed in Russian bombing in Ukraine Saturday

Trump’s extraordinary intervention came after Russian strikes killed at least 20 people in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.

Three children were among those killed when Russian aerial bombs hit residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said Saturday. At least 18 people were wounded.

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than 4 1/2 years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Ukraine is struggling to counter escalating Russian bombardments that have killed more than 60 people over the past four days.

Anger in Kyiv over diesel deal

“Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote Saturday on X.

He said the attacks show Moscow understands “any easing of pressure to mean they can keep fighting, to mean they can keep dropping bombs on cities.”

“Russia’s choice is war,” Zelenskyy said in a later Telegram post, after drone attacks on energy facilities and a ballistic missile attack on Kyiv. He said every additional billion dollars Russia earns from exports would help pay for weapons components, drone upgrades, missile production and the recruitment of mercenaries, and that Moscow would only be ready to stop when its ability to fight diminished.

Moscow received from diesel deal “signals that it is apparently permissible to continue attacking. And this needs to be corrected,” he said, urging the U.S., Europe and other partners to limit Russia’s capacity to wage war.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine was coordinating steps to counter the extra revenue Russia will receive, and that he had spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron about shoring up air defenses, warning of an increased risk of further missile strikes in the coming days.

He also said he had discussed the developments with Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and that Ukraine would receive ammunition in the coming days for the F-16s it uses to intercept Shahed drones.

Trump had been set to discuss a suspected case of plague in Russia with President Vladimir Putin in a phone call.

Instead, the American leader announced Friday that Russia will immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter.” Russia will deliver an additional 3 million tons “within a short period of time” after that, he wrote.

In Kyiv, people gathered at a memorial to fallen soldiers on Independence Square greeted the deal with a mix of anger and resignation.

“Trump has once again shown his true face,” said Oleksandr Petrenko, 26. “He didn’t care about the situation, the shelling or the destruction of our homes. All he’s interested in is oil or the fuel prices and how much Americans have to pay.”

“Knowing Trump, he tries to manipulate the markets. He’s got an election coming up soon,” Petrenko said. “So he needs to emphasize to his voters that gasoline will be cheap. But it won’t be effective.”

For Oksana Yakunina, a financial adviser from the central city of Kropyvnytskyi, the announcement “didn’t really come as a surprise.”

“Trump has been working with Putin for a long time,” she told The Associated Press.

European allies question US-Russia deal

Ukraine’s European allies expressed dismay at the deal and said they stood by their commitment to sanctions.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Stockholm regretted the agreement, “as energy revenues are central to the Russian war chest,” and noted that the European Union would adopt its most comprehensive sanctions package yet on Monday, with 1,600 listings targeting Russia’s military-industrial complex.

The German government “remains committed to the sanctions imposed on Russia and is working with its European partners on further sanctions,” spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said, adding that support for Ukraine “remains unwavering.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski questioned whether Russia could deliver at all. Citing his embassy’s reports of fuel shortages even in Moscow, and “serious sources” saying Ukraine has damaged about half of Russia’s refining capacity, he asked on X: “So where will the surpluses for export come from?”

Trump’s announcement was in stark contrast to a sweeping Russia sanctions law he signed last month that aimed at clamping down on the oil and gas revenues that fuel Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Trump announced the deal as his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Ukrainian officials in Miami on Friday to discuss a proposal to end the war.

“I believe our team is simply being used as a smoke screen. And that is certainly not fair. It is certainly not how partners should treat each other,” Zelenskyy said Friday.

Speaking about Friday’s announcement, a senior Ukrainian official told AP that the Ukrainian side was not aware of the deal before the announcement.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said Saturday the diesel deal announcement was not tied to anything under discussion between the U.S. and Ukrainian negotiating teams meeting in Florida.

He confirmed the Ukrainian delegation had left Florida and were on their way back to Ukraine.

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Daly reported from Washington and Morton reported from London. Associated Press journalists Bela Szandelszky in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine