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

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

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

The president, who on Friday reached a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Russia in an effort to tackle high fuel prices ahead of the US midterm elections, has been urging Zelensky for weeks to halt attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure. He also tried to blame Ukraine for record US diesel prices, rather than the US-led war in Iran, which has raised world energy prices.

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

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

Trump also stated that if he were US president in 2022, “those wars would never have started. There’s no reason why the wars with Ukraine and Russia would have started. They started because of incompetence.”

Zelenskyy has “lost 30% of the country and there’s over a million people in between, over 2 million people killed. It’s a war that should never have started. And I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president,” Trump said.

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

20 people were killed in Russian bombings in Ukraine Saturday

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

Three children were among those killed when a Russian aerial bomb hit a residential building in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on Saturday. At least 18 people were injured.

Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a long-range air war while their forces remain largely deadlocked on the front lines, more than 4 1/2 years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Ukraine is struggling to counter increased Russian bombing that has killed more than 60 people over the past four days.

Anger in Kyiv over diesel deal

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

He said the attacks showed that Moscow understood “any easing of pressure means they can keep fighting, which means they can keep dropping bombs on cities.”

“Russia’s choice is war,” Zelenskyy said in a subsequent Telegram post, following drone strikes on energy facilities and a ballistic missile strike in Kyiv. He said every additional billion dollars Russia earned from exports would help pay for weapons components, drone upgrades, missile production and mercenary recruitment, and that Moscow would only be prepared to stop when its ability to fight was reduced.

Moscow received a signal from the diesel deal that it appeared to be allowed to continue attacking. And this needs to be fixed, he said, urging the US, Europe and other partners to limit Russia’s capacity to fight.

Zelensky said Ukraine was coordinating measures to counter the additional revenue Russia would receive, and that he had spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron about strengthening air defenses, and warned of an increased risk of further missile attacks 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 used to intercept the Shahed drone.

Trump is scheduled to discuss suspected cases of the outbreak in Russia with President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call.

Instead, the American leader announced on Friday that Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “shortly after.” Russia will send an additional 3 million tons “in a short 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 26-year-old Oleksandr Petrenko. “He doesn’t care about the situation, the shootings or the destruction of our homes. All he cares about is oil or fuel prices and how much Americans have to pay.”

“Knowing Trump, he is trying to manipulate the market. He will call an election in the near future,” Petrenko said. “So he needs to emphasize to his voters that petrol prices will be cheap. But that won’t be effective.”

For Oksana Yakunina, a financial advisor from Kropyvnytskyi city center, the announcement “wasn’t that surprising.”

“Trump has worked closely with Putin for a long time,” he told The Associated Press.

European allies question US-Russia deal

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

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

The German government “remains committed to the sanctions imposed against Russia and is cooperating with European partners on further sanctions,” German spokesman Stefan Kornelius said, adding that support for Ukraine “remains steadfast.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski questioned whether Russia could make it happen. Citing his embassy’s report of fuel shortages even in Moscow, and “serious sources” saying that Ukraine had damaged about half of Russia’s refining capacity, he asked X: “So where does the export surplus come from?”

Trump’s announcement stands in stark contrast to the Russia sanctions legislation he signed last month aimed at curbing oil and gas revenues that fueled Russia’s war against Ukraine.

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

“I believe our team is just being used as a smokescreen. And that’s certainly not fair. This is definitely not the way partners should treat each other,” Zelenskyy said Friday.

Speaking about Friday’s announcement, a senior Ukrainian official told the AP that the Ukrainian side was unaware of the deal before the announcement.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Saturday that the diesel deal announcement was not tied to anything being discussed between the U.S. and Ukrainian negotiating teams meeting in Florida.

He confirmed the Ukrainian delegation had left Florida and was on its way back to Ukraine.

___

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.

___

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