Trump savages Zelenskyy for saying end of Ukraine war is 'far away'

President Trump again ripped into Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday as the relationship between the two world leaders continues to fracture following last week’s disastrous Oval Office meeting.

Mr. Trump wasted no time pushing back on Mr. Zelenskyy’s statement on Sunday that an end to his country’s war with Russia was “very, very far away.” The comments contradicted Mr. Trump’s view that a peace agreement is close but could slip away if not reached soon.

“This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelenskyy and America will not put up with it for much longer!” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“It is what I was saying, this guy doesn’t want there to be peace as long as he has America’s backing and, Europe, in the meeting they had with Zelenskyy stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the U.S. — Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia. What are they thinking?”

After Mr. Trump’s social media post, Mr. Zelenskyy took to X to clean up his grim assessment of the war.

“Peace is needed as soon as possible,” he wrote, adding “it is very important that we try to make our diplomacy really substantive to end this war the soonest possible.”

The back-and-forth on social media comes after the two got into a shouting match during Mr. Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House.

At one point, Mr. Trump warned Mr. Zelenskyy that he didn’t “have the cards” to win this war on his own and threatened to walk away from peace negotiations.

“You’re either going make a deal or we’re out, and if we’re out, you’ll fight it out,” Mr. Trump said during the exchange. “I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”

Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelenskyy had been scheduled to sign a mineral rights deal that would have given the U.S. a stake in Ukraine’s rare earth elements, which have military and technological applications.

Ahead of the Oval Office meeting, the two leaders also ripped each other on social media. Mr. Trump called the Ukrainian president “a dictator without elections,” while Mr. Zelenskyy accused his American counterpart of living in a “bubble” of Russian disinformation.