U.S. President Donald Trump has once again directed his frustration toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and former President Joe Biden over the war in Ukraine, as he appears to be seeking distance from the conflict while it continues to rage and the White House struggles to bring it to an end.
In a post on Truth Social, President Trump stated, “The war between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine,” concluding the post with, “President Zelenskyy and Crooked Joe Biden did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin. There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. But that is the past. Now we have to get it to STOP, AND FAST. SO SAD!”
Trump once again claimed that, had he been president in 2022, the war would have never started and referred to both Biden and Zelensky as “incompetent”.
Speaking to reporters later while meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Trump took a swipe at Zelensky, saying, “You don’t start a war with a country 20 times larger and hope that people will give you missiles.”
Over the past few months, President Trump has alternated between blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Zelensky for the lack of progress in peace negotiations.
As reports grow of internal divisions within his administration over whether to make concessions to Russia, and as the realities on the battlefield become clearer, Trump may be heeding advice from more moderate members of his inner circle—such as Vice President J.D. Vance—who argue for distancing the U.S. from the war and potentially walking away from Ukraine altogether.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to end the war within 24 hours. However, as he now finds that his threats against Moscow have little effect and that Kyiv is proving more difficult to work with than expected, Trump appears to be preemptively placing blame on his predecessor and Zelensky—two figures unpopular with his base—in case he fails to end the war and Ukraine is ultimately defeated.