Ukraine feels betrayed by Donald Trump: ‘What has happened is a stab in the back’

Donald Trump has unleashed a campaign to discredit Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whom the U.S. president considers an illegitimate leader. On Wednesday, he twice called him a “dictator without elections” and accused him of having done a “terrible job” as president of Ukraine. Not only that: he also stated his belief that the Russian invasion is the fault of the invaded country. Zelenskiy’s government, and numerous voices in Ukrainian society, have expressed their bewilderment at the signs of a rupture with the Western power that has been their main ally during the war, but above all they feel betrayed.

Every move Trump has made since taking office a month ago has been aimed at humiliating Zelenskiy and Kyiv. His statements over the past two days have been insulting to the Ukrainian head of state: he has called him “a modestly successful comedian,” claimed he has a pyrrhic support of 4% in the polls – no one knows where Trump got this figure from – and said the Ukrainian leader fell asleep last week before a meeting with his Treasury Secretary Scott Besset. All this has been accompanied by decisions that have been an affront to Zelenskiy’s leadership and to his country’s ability to emerge unscathed from Russian aggression.

The internal political battle has already begun in Ukraine, coinciding with Trump’s broadsides, but neither the majority of the population according to polls, nor any political party, wants to hold elections now because to do so martial law would have to be lifted. There is also the enormous difficulty in staging an election in the middle of a war, and the fact the opposition has not had time to organize itself. “Elections at gunpoint to elect a puppet president of Moscow who will sign the cession of Ukrainian territories to Russia… No, thank you, we prefer to continue fighting in our own way,” said Lesia Vasilenko, a deputy from Holos, an opposition force to Zelenskiy, on her social networks.

On February 19, the Ukrainian president convened a small group of media outlets to respond to Trump for the first time: “Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect for him as the leader of a nation that we respect greatly, is trapped in this disinformation bubble,” he said. Zelenskiy, a man of strong character, had been biting his tongue since the fall of 2024 and the U.S. presidential campaign.

One of the taunts repeated at rallies by the then-Republican candidate was that Zelenskiy was “the greatest salesman on Earth” because, according to Trump’s account, “every time he comes to the United States he walks away with $100 billion.” Trump promised that he would put an end to this aid if he reached the White House. Zelenskiy and Trump met during the campaign, last September. Trump said that he had “very good relations” with Vladimir Putin, to which the Ukrainian replied: “I hope that relations will be better with me.” Trump responded with a smile.

The meeting of White House and Kremlin delegations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday marked a turning point in Zelenskiy’s patience. The Ukrainian leader said he had not been informed of the talks. Furthermore, Trump confirmed that he will probably meet with Putin this month. The Ukrainian president’s office has been working to ensure that Zelenskiy could meet the U.S. president before any talks with the Russian leader. Zelenskiy reacted by cancelling an official trip to Saudi Arabia he had scheduled for the day after the meeting between the Russian and American representatives.

Zelenskiy’s stance has only made the situation worse. The White House has become more aggressive, with Vice President J. D. Vance and Elon Musk, a close associate of Trump, echoing the president’s slogans. “If in Trump’s first term he was surrounded by people who appeased him, in his second he is surrounded by people who amplify his ideas,” said American writer Thomas Friedman on Wednesday at a conference on the situation in Ukraine organized by the media outlet NV.

“We knew that someone who promised to end the war in 24 hours or three months [as Trump claimed during his campaign] could only do so by surrendering the country. We were aware that there would be no decisions in our favour,” says Taras Yatsenko, director of the media outlet TVe Misto and a speaker at the recent Munich Security Conference.

“What has happened is a stab in the back, there is no other way to describe it,” says Genadi Kostov, a retired military officer and representative of a security analysis group in Kyiv. “For Ukrainian society it is a blow, not because of what Trump says, as we already knew about his closeness to Putin, but because Trump was elected by a majority of Americans. It is difficult to know whether the U.S. will be our ally in the future, which is why we must count on Europe.”

“There is a feeling of betrayal and a lot of unease because Ukrainian politicians told us that Trump is a tough guy and that he would be tough on Putin, but he has been tough on Ukraine and Europe,” Yatsenko said. Zelenskiy and his team have tried, and are still trying, to be conciliatory toward the U.S. president, as demonstrated by the cordial and unprotested reception of his special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, by the country’s authorities on Thursday.

Another example was provided Wednesday by an adviser to Zelenskiy, Mikhail Podoliak, who asked rhetorically on social media: “Why are U.S. representatives voluntarily and so incredibly quickly handing over global leadership and the direction of negotiations to Russia?” Podoliak pointed to three options, the first of which was that it could be “a trap [by Trump] to end up turning Russia into a kind of vassal state to control its energy resources and exports.”

Containing emotions

Other voices outside the political establishment are also urging Zelenskiy to be cautious. “We all have negative emotions towards Trump, but it is important to contain them at the moment,” former Ukrainian Economy Minister Timofei Milovanov wrote on social media. “However unfair it may be, it is important that the situation does not become personal. You cannot beat Trump with his methods,” Milovanov said. “If he does not appear to be the king of agreements, he will simply get angry, and it makes no difference to him whether he gets angry with us or with Russia.”

“I am confident that the president [Zelenskiy] has enough intelligence, will, and restraint. Because emotions have no right to exist in a situation that entails even minimal losses for our state,” Volodymyr Omelian, former Minister of Infrastructure, told Espreso on Wednesday. Omelian, a career diplomat and captain in the Ukrainian army, also described what happened as “catastrophic”: “It is a catastrophic situation from a foreign policy perspective. This rhetoric is not typical of strategic allies. I see no way out of what happened. It is very important for Trump not to be exposed. This means that he will not recognise Zelenskiy as president, and this will have very serious consequences for Ukraine.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition