At Saudi summit in Miami, Trump strikes Zelensky: ‘Not going to have a country’
President Donald Trump assailed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator without elections,” during a speech before Saudi Arabian investors in Miami Beach Wednesday, warning that his time is running out to reach a peace deal to end the three-year Russian war.
“Zelensky better move fast, or he’s not going to have a country left. Got to move, got to move fast,” Trump said at the Future Investment Initiative Institute’s Priority Summit, an event backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
His comments come as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman brokered a meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week in Riyadh to devise an endurable end to the war in Ukraine. It represents an escalation of antagonistic rhetoric from Trump toward the Ukrainian leader once heralded as a hero by many Republican lawmakers.
At the Faena Forum, Trump mocked Zelensky as an unpopular leader running out of options as his country’s cities are being demolished by Russian forces.
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“The only thing he was really good at was playing Joe Biden like a fiddle,” Trump said, taking a shot at the previous administration’s acquiescence to Zelensky’s requests for funding. “We’re successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia, something I’ll admit only Trump is going to be able to do and the Trump administration.”
The president suggested that Zelensky — who has protested Ukraine’s exclusion from Russia’s talks with the United States — may be resistant to a ceasefire “to keep the gravy train going … I love Ukraine but Zelensky has done a terrible job, his country is shattered.”
The U.S. government has approved nearly $175 billion to support Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or injured on both sides of the conflict.
Democrats have called Trump’s increasingly anti-Ukrainian posture a sign of America in retreat from an onslaught instigated by Vladimir Putin.
“When President Trump talks about abandoning Ukraine, and how President Zelensky is the dictator, and how Ukraine started the war, not Putin — that is throwing Ukraine and our NATO allies under the bus,” said Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, on the Senate floor Wednesday.
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While Trump has casually and repeatedly belittled and castigated Zelensky, he has refrained from assigning any blame on Putin, who has already had a long call with Trump and signaled openness to an in-person meeting with the president.
In the middle is Rubio, who has sought to stay aligned with the president, even as he’s previously laid the blame for the war at Putin’s feet.
“We think what Putin did was terrible, invading a country, the atrocities he’s committed. He did horrible things,” Rubio told Megyn Kelly in an interview last month.
But sitting in Riyadh this week during his first Middle Eastern trip as secretary of state, Rubio spoke of the “extraordinary opportunities that exist” to partner with Russia on geopolitical and economic issues of common interest once the conflict comes to an end.
This story was originally published February 19, 2025 at 8:10 PM.
