President Trump sharply criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a televised interview Thursday after Zelensky declared that Kyiv was “done” complying with Trump’s request to pause attacks on Russian energy facilities.
“If you tell me that Zelensky is again shooting at refineries, all he’s doing is making the world oil price higher,” Trump told Newsmax host Rob Finnerty. “I think that’s a disgrace. There’s plenty of other targets.”
As the White House seeks to revive efforts to end Russian President Vladimir Putin’s four-and-a-half-year invasion of Ukraine, Trump said Zelensky was “not a good guy for us to deal with.”
“I think they actually both would like to see it end,” Trump said. “But I think I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with than Putin.”
Trump said Sunday that Moscow and Kyiv had agreed to stop targeting one another’s energy infrastructure as winter approached. Zelensky, however, said Ukraine had honored the understanding on its own while Russia carried out more than 100 strikes against Ukrainian energy facilities over the previous week.
“The block is out,” Zelensky told the Financial Times on Thursday during a visit to London. “We’re done.”
Shortly afterward, Ryazan province Governor Pavel Malkov said Ukrainian drones struck a building belonging to a state-owned oil company, igniting a fire.
The dispute marked another rupture after a brief thaw in relations between Trump and Zelensky. On Friday, Zelensky traveled to Brussels for a summit of European leaders, where he thanked what he called the continent’s “real leaders” for their backing.
“We want to end this war as [quickly] as possible,” Zelensky told reporters in the Belgian capital. “We don’t see now signals from Russian side that they are ready for this, to end this war. That’s why we have to prepare for the winter.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitriy Peskov echoed Trump’s criticism Friday, saying, “Zelensky doesn’t want to take responsibility and move toward a peaceful resolution.”
Russian attacks were reported across nine Ukrainian regions Friday, leaving at least 15 people wounded and hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity. Russia’s Defense Ministry separately claimed that its air defenses had intercepted 644 Ukrainian drones overnight across several regions, Crimea and the Black Sea.
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The latest Trump-Zelensky clash follows a dispute that began last week, when Trump announced an agreement to purchase more than 2.25 million barrels of diesel from Russia in an effort to curb fuel prices that have surged amid the war with Iran.
Zelensky expressed outrage in an interview with Axios, describing the deal as something that “looks like a happy birthday present” for Putin. He also alleged that US military officials had threatened to suspend intelligence sharing on Russian airstrikes unless Kyiv accepted Trump’s proposed moratorium.
White House sources, however, told The Post that Putin understood the cease-fire to cover oil refineries only, not the power plants that Russian forces have continued to strike.
The sources accused Zelensky of deliberately broadening the narrow agreement’s terms in order to argue that Russia had violated it first, an approach they said weakened both the arrangement and Trump’s diplomatic effort.
Trump has denied that the United States ever halted intelligence cooperation with Ukraine. Tensions rose again Tuesday when Kyiv abruptly lost access to the Starshield military satellite network.
Starshield, SpaceX’s secure military version of the Starlink satellite system, enables Ukrainian forces to monitor and intercept fast-moving threats while supporting long-range strikes against targets inside Russia.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk blamed the Pentagon and White House for the disruption Wednesday. A senior US official told The Post on Thursday that Trump had not restricted Ukraine’s Starshield access. The Pentagon has not commented on the allegation.
Ukrainian officials said Starshield service had been restored by Thursday morning.
Despite Zelensky’s objections, the Trump administration maintains that its current strategy — including the diesel agreement with Russia — offers the strongest path toward securing peace in Ukraine.
Officials claimed the deal would effectively serve as a carrot to get Putin back to the negotiating table and lay the groundwork for a lasting peace.
With Post wires