President Trump lashed out Monday at his critics, including The Wall Street Journal, telling them he’ll end Russia’s war on Ukraine without their advice.
Mr. Trump posted the message on Truth Social hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders arrive at the White House to work on a peace deal to end more than three years of war.
“I’ve settled 6 wars in 6 months, one of them a possible nuclear disaster, and yet I have to read & listen to the Wall Street Journal, and many other who truly don’t have a clue, tell me everything that I’m doing wrong on the Russian/Ukraine mess,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social.
He again insisted that the war would never have started if he were president, not President Biden, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
“I know exactly what I’m doing and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all these conflicts for years and were never able to do a thing to stop them,” Mr. Trump said. “They are ‘stupid’ people with no common sense, intelligence or understanding, and they only make the current [Russia/Ukraine] disaster more difficult to FIX. Despite all of my lightweight and very jealous critics, I’ll get it done – I always do,”
Mr. Trump met Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to try to advance peace talks. Since the meeting, Democrats and other critics have faulted Mr. Trump for failing to secure a ceasefire or peace deal in the three-hour summit.
Mr. Trump dropped his demand for Russia to agree to an immediate ceasefire and began pressuring Kyiv to accept territorial concessions to end the war.
At the Alaska summit, Mr. Trump got Mr. Putin to accept security guarantees for Ukraine similar to NATO’s Article 5, the pact’s central collective defense agreement under which an attack on one member is considered an attack against them all.
A top demand from Mr. Putin has been that Ukraine never join NATO.
“President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to or he can continue to fight. Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago without a shot being fired) and no going into NATO by Ukraine. Some things never change,” Mr. Trump said on social media.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump said that if talks with Mr. Zelenskyy don’t produce results, he would pursue further negotiations with Mr. Putin in hopes of reaching a permanent end to the war.
Mr. Zelenskyy is hoping to use Monday’s meeting to clarify an ironclad security guarantee from Europe and the United States, similar to Article 5, and persuade Mr. Trump that a ceasefire must happen before real peace talks can begin.
Mr. Zelenskyy said late Sunday that he was “confident that we will defend Ukraine, effectively guarantee security and that our people will always be grateful to President Trump.”
“Russia must end this war, which it itself started,” he wrote on social media.
The Ukrainian president’s visit will be his first to the White House since a February meeting devolved into a shouting match between Mr. Zelenskyy, Mr. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.
The moment, which played out in front of news cameras, stunned Ukrainian allies and marked a sharp change in the United States’ yearslong support for an ally embroiled in a bloody war that began with Russia’s invasion.
Those confirmed as attending the White House meeting are European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Finnish President Alexander Stubb.