September 26, 2024 | 00.07
READING TIME: 2 minutes
Donald Trump against Volodymyr Zelensky. The former US president, candidate in the November 5 elections, bluntly attacks the Ukrainian president who “refuses to make a deal” to end the war with Russia. Never before has Trump used such explicit words against the leader of Kiev.
The Republican candidate for the White House for months, and until a few hours ago, presented himself as a potential mediator capable of facilitating dialogue between Zelensky and Vladimir Putin to reach peace: “I would call them and say ‘enough, come to an agreement. This is madness,'” Trump said and repeated.
In the last few hours, the tone has changed. Zelensky has been defined by Trump as “the best salesman on the face of the Earth: every time he comes to our country, he leaves with 60 billion”. Now, it comes to a frontal attack. “Those cities are gone, they are destroyed and we continue to give billions to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelensky. Any deal would have been better than the situation we have now: there is a country razed to the ground, impossible to rebuild”, says Trump at a rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina.
Also in the dock are US President Joe Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, Trump’s rival in the vote scheduled for less than 40 days: “It would have been possible to reach an agreement if we had had a competent president. Biden and Kamala have allowed us to get to this point by giving Zelensky money and weapons like never before”.
Zelensky, after attending the UN assembly and the summit organized by Biden in New York, will be at the White House and will meet Harris. He will not see Trump, barring any surprises: no face-to-face meeting is planned, contrary to the hypotheses circulating last week.
One episode, in particular, would have influenced Trump. Zelensky, immediately after his arrival in the United States, last Sunday visited a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a key state in the upcoming elections. And this irritated Trump who considered the visit as a pro-Harris electoral move.
During his rally the next day in Pennsylvania, Trump – always skeptical about US support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion – accused Zelensky of “wanting Harris’ victory at all costs”. Now, the frontal attack.
