Trump accuses Zelensky of not wanting to end Ukraine war as rift deepens

In a fresh escalation of the feud between Washington and Kyiv, US President Donald Trump on Sunday accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of not wanting to end the war with Russia, declaring in a Truth Social post that he believed “great progress is being made” in his own peace negotiations.

The broadside landed hours after Ukraine launched one of its biggest drone attacks of the year on Russia, striking an oil terminal in St. Petersburg, and followed Trump’s decision to waive new sanctions on Moscow — a move that has alarmed Kyiv and European allies.

FAKTA

• Trump wrote he was “in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.”
• He accused Zelensky of targeting Russian diesel refineries “knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including those in the United States.”
• Of Zelensky he wrote: “he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”
• He defended pausing new sanctions on Russia: “My decision on Russia is a very simple one… I can sign it later, or any time that I want!”
• Zelensky responded on X that Ukraine was doing “everything on our part” for peace, saying he had spoken with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on Sunday.

Trump accuses Zelensky in Truth Social broadside

Trump’s attack was unusually personal. “Zelenskyy doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him… he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” he wrote, according to CNN, which first reported the post. He added that Ukraine “could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now” and described the country as being “in shambles”.

The US president tied his criticism directly to Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy targets. He said the attacks were damaging global diesel markets and American consumers, and defended his decision to pause a sweeping new sanctions package against Moscow, arguing that signing it now would drive Russia away from negotiations. Trump has waived sanctions on imports of Russian diesel and, on Friday, invoked a waiver exempting Russia from sweeping economic penalties mandated by the US Congress — a move that drew criticism even from Republicans, CNN reported.

A week earlier, Trump had announced that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, part of a White House effort to relieve pressure on oil and diesel prices. Neither Kyiv nor Moscow acknowledged such an agreement. Ukraine briefly halted its strikes on Russian energy, then resumed them — while Russia never stopped pounding Ukraine’s energy plants and cities. Last week, Trump called Kyiv’s strikes on Russian oil refineries a “disgrace”.

Zelensky pushes back as Kyiv fears losing US support

Zelensky rejected the accusation. “We are doing everything on our part to make this happen, and to ensure that America’s position is strong and helps bring peace closer,” he posted on X after speaking with Witkoff and Kushner, describing the contacts as part of “nonstop communication” toward peace.

In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Zelensky said it would be a “historic mistake” for the United States to formally side with Russia, and said the sanctions waiver strengthened Vladimir Putin’s war effort, calling it “more support for Russian aggression”. He also said Ukraine’s military access to the Starlink satellite system to guide its drones was still curtailed — “a message from the American government” — a claim the Trump administration has denied. Zelensky added that US intelligence sharing had been blocked for three days during ballistic missile attacks but had since been restored.

Asked whether Trump was an ally of Ukraine, Zelensky replied: “I hope so.” And when asked about Trump’s remark that he was harder to deal with than Putin, Zelensky answered: “Better to have partners who are very open and clear than to have those who are killers, even with a smile on their face.”

Overnight strikes and a summit proposal raise the stakes

The war itself raged on through the weekend. Russia’s defence ministry said it shot down 1,015 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday. St. Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov said the attack killed one person and wounded five, with fires at the city’s oil terminal, an oil depot and warehouses. Russian e-commerce company Ozon said its logistics hub in the city was on fire, and internet company VK said its data centre in the Leningrad region was attacked.

On the Ukrainian side, eleven people were killed and nearly 50 injured across Ukraine in Russian missile and drone attacks in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, Ukrainian authorities said, including what they called a massive attack on energy facilities in the Odesa region. Zelensky wrote on X that since Trump announced the energy ceasefire a week ago, Russia had “deliberately attacked Ukraine’s energy and oil and gas sectors 76 times”.

Meanwhile, The Times reported that Putin has proposed a summit with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the war, possibly on the sidelines of next month’s APEC summit in China — a format, proposed during an October 9 phone call according to The Wall Street Journal, that would freeze Ukraine and Europe out of the talks and that has set off alarm bells in European capitals.

What comes next

With another winter of Russian strikes approaching and Ukraine’s energy grid under sustained assault, the public rift between the two presidents has deepened fears in Kyiv that Washington is tilting toward Moscow. Trump insists his negotiations are progressing and warns that new sanctions would wreck them. Zelensky says he wants to trust Trump — and hopes the US president changes his mind about Putin.