Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticized Trump’s peace ultimatum to Vladimir Putin, suggesting it’s too slow.
The U.S. president on Monday said he is “very, very unhappy” with Russia and threatened the country with secondary tariffs of up to 100 percent if it does not negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine within 50 days.
Zelensky, while appreciative of the support, thinks this period is too long, however, and spoke to Trump’s favorite newspaper, the New York Post, to ensure he receives the message.
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“Fifty days, for us, is just—every day is scary,” he said in an interview with the New York Post.
“Putin does not want a conclusion… so he’s just not ready to compromise,” he added. “If Ukraine has to do this on its own, we have a very long way to go with a lot of deaths to convince him that it’s important [to end the conflict] because it’s not just words—they need serious leverage.”
Zelensky also referenced Trump’s fraying relations with Putin, who “has wasted President Trump’s time,” he said.
“I would very much like to see the United States, the Congress and the president put some pressure on this situation with sanctions, and so the sooner, the faster it can be done, the better,” he added.
Trump has recently taken to publicly moaning that he has been strung along by the Kremlin chief.
“A lot of people are dying and it should end,” he said on July 8. “We get a lot of bulls–-t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth.”
The Ukrainian president said that Russia could end the war if the appetite was there, but it is not.
“Frankly, Putin was just lying to him that he wanted to end the war and Zelensky was not ready—and then President Trump saw that it was the exact opposite,” he said.
“Today, President Trump is disappointed that all of this turned out to be a lie, that Putin was just playing him.”
On Tuesday, Trump said he might revisit his deadline. “A lot of opinions change very rapidly—might not be 50 days, might be much sooner than 50 days,” he said during a White House press briefing alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
“I think that President Trump believed that the Russians were really ready to end the war because they felt sorry for the people who are dying, and I think he’s disappointed that these Russians don’t care about people’s lives that much,” Zelensky added in the Post interview.
“Trump takes the death of people more seriously than Putin. It hurts him more—he talks about it—than Putin, who doesn’t feel sorry for his people at all, and they are his citizens.”
The interview followed news that at least two people were killed and a further 27 were injured after a Russian air strike on a shopping centre and market in the town of Dobropillia in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Wednesday.
Trump, meanwhile, has raged against the needless death meted out by repeated strikes on Ukrainian cities.
“Putin really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening... I don’t like it,” he complained on Monday.
Putin’s propensity to embarrass Trump by “talking nice” on the phone and then bombing Ukraine after hanging up appears to have informed the U.S. president’s decision to finally back Ukraine by sending missile systems.
Last week, Putin launched one of his biggest attacks on Ukraine yet, just hours after Trump vowed to send more aid to Kyiv, and accused the Russian president of giving him “bulls--t.”
The aerial assault saw 728 drones and 13 missiles launched upon Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, surpassing the previous record of 539 drones set just a week prior on July 4.
