Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is bashing former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), attacking them in American media outlets and touring an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania Sunday — reportedly arriving there at the taxpayers’ expense on an Air Force jet.
The New Yorker has an exhaustive piece on Zelensky penned byJoshua Yaffa, stating that the Ukrainian leader “speaks with the urgency of a leader who knows that he may be facing his last best chance for substantial foreign assistance” as President Biden’s presidential term is coming to an end. The Q&A in the piece is revealing, as Zelensky openly attacks Trump, asserting that he “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how.”
“With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand. I’ve seen many leaders who were convinced they knew how to end it tomorrow, and as they waded deeper into it, they realized it’s not that simple,” he said, ripping Trump’s running mate, Vance, as “too radical.”
“Vance has come out with a more precise plan to—” the New Yorker asked as Zelensky chimed in, “to give up our territories.”
“Your words, not mine. But, yes, that’s the gist of it,” the New Yorker continued as Zelensky continued to, essentially, criticize the Trump-Vance ticket:
His message seems to be that Ukraine must make a sacrifice. This brings us back to the question of the cost and who shoulders it. The idea that the world should end this war at Ukraine’s expense is unacceptable. But I do not consider this concept of his a plan, in any formal sense. This would be an awful idea, if a person were actually going to carry it out, to make Ukraine shoulder the costs of stopping the war by giving up its territories. But there’s certainly no way this could ever happen. This kind of scenario would have no basis in international norms, in U.N. statute, in justice. And it wouldn’t necessarily end the war, either. It’s just sloganeering.
It would be one thing if these were just interviews, but according to reports, Zelensky, who has been busying himself criticizing the Republican ticket for president, flew into the United States, touring an ammunition factory in the key swing state of Pennsylvania on Sunday. Further, it seems he arrived to the facility on an U.S. Air Force C-17. In other words, he arrived on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime:
Donald Trump Jr. is among those who pointed to the absurdity of the entire stunt.
“So a foreign leader who has received billions of dollars in funding from American taxpayers, comes to our country and has the nerve to attack the GOP ticket for President?” he asked, noting the timing of this is particularly poor, as a man with an obsession with Ukraine attempted to murder his father just one week ago.
“And he does this right after a pro-Ukraine zealot tried to assassinate my father? Disgraceful!” Don Jr. added:
It should be noted that in June, Vice President Kamala Harris promised another $1.5 billion to Ukraine.
During a recent interview on X Spaces, Trump said he will end the Russia-Ukraine war as president-elect:
I want to get Russia to settle up with Ukraine and stop this — millions of people being killed, far greater than the number you read about. But I want to get that done before I even take office, I want to get that done as president-elect, because it has to be solved — too many people dying, too many cities are just in rubble right now, you look at the cultures just being destroyed. We’ve got to get that done, and I’ll get it done. There wouldn’t have been an October 7th, there wouldn’t have been Russia attacking Ukraine, there wouldn’t be inflation, all this inflation which has hurt people so badly. You wouldn’t have had that horrible type of withdrawal — we were getting out of Afghanistan, but with dignity and strength — that was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.
“And frankly Russia would have never gone into Ukraine if it weren’t for that,” Trump added, pointing to the weakness of the Biden-Harris administration. “They looked at that and they said, ‘This country is no longer run by Trump. This country is run by stupid people.'”
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