Donald Trump was president for four years and in that time was unable to resolve the Ukraine-Russia conflict, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview that aired Sunday, rejecting as pure fantasy the Republican's claim that he could end the war in a day.
Speaking in Kyiv with ABC's Martha Raddatz, Zelenskyy said there were some "dangerous signals coming from particularly politicians" regarding future aid to Ukraine, though he noted the question of future support is "up for Americans to decide, and I would hate to interfere."
While many Republicans back the Biden administration's military support, including a recent package that includes controversial cluster munitions, the party's MAGA wing — including grassroots activists, Trump, and his rival for the presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — have suggested the conflict is a distraction from domestic priorities.
Trump has even asserted that Russia's full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, could have been ended, by him, in a single day. "It'll take 24 hours. I will get that ended," he said in May. "It would be easy."
Zelenskyy, asked about that assertion, was himself diplomatic, saying the "desire to bring the war to an end is beautiful." But, he added, "This desire should be based on some real-life experience."
Noting that Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, illegally annexing Crimea, Zelenskyy argued that Trump already had a chance to negotiate a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Well, it looks as if Donald Trump had already these 24 hours once in his time. We were at war, not a full-scale war, but we were at war and as I assume he had that time at his disposal, but he must have had some other priorities," the Ukrainian leader said.
While president, Trump temporarily withheld congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure Zelenskyy to open an investigation into his political rival, then-Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, an incident that led to his impeachment. In his memoir, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Trump "didn't seem to care" that failing to deliver the aid — intended to support "a democracy under siege" — was a violation of federal law.
Zelenskyy, on Sunday, said that he doesn't have much interest in any peace deal that envisions him ceding land to an invader.
"If we are talking about ending the war at the cost of Ukraine, in other words to make us give up our territories, well, I think in this way Biden could have brought it to an end even in five minutes," he said. "But we would not agree."
