White House national security adviser Mike Waltz says Ukraine needs to “tone down” its criticism of the US and sign a minerals deal being pushed by President Donald Trump. It proposes giving Washington $500bn worth of natural resources, including oil and gas.
Waltz said Kyiv was wrong to push back against the US president’s approach to peace talks with Moscow, given everything the US had done for Ukraine.
He denied accusations the US had snubbed Ukraine and America’s European allies by excluding them from talks earlier this week with Russia.
Trump referred to Zelenskyy as “a dictator” on Wednesday for refusing to hold elections and attributing the violence to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy, for his part, expressed his hope that Trump’s team were “more truthful” and claimed that Trump was living in a Kremlin “disinformation bubble.”
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the driving force behind Trump’s massive revamp of the US government, also criticised Zelenskyy on Thursday, saying that Trump was correct to exclude him from the negotiations with Russia and that Ukrainians “despised” their president.
The tech boss launched into a tirade against Zelenskyy on his X social network, accusing him without evidence of running a “massive graft machine feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.”
Reports say President Trump is echoing Russia’s talking points about the war and the Ukrainian president, a week after a lengthy phone call with President Putin.
Meanwhile the Kremlin restates that it would be “unacceptable” for Nato countries to deploy troops to Ukraine – UK PM Keir Starmer had said he was “ready” to put troops on the ground as part of any peace deal.
