Trump Pivots to Criticizing Putin, after Zelenskyy, as Ukraine Peace Talks Falter

After Russia escalated its assault on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv overnight, U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to be shifting the focus of his criticism over the stalled peace talks over the war between the two former Soviet countries from Ukraine’s President Voldymyr Zelenskyy to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!” President Trump posted on TruthSocial Thursday morning.

Those strikes came in tandem with a statement from the chairman of Russia’s national security council, Sergei Shoigu, asserting the aggressor’s right to use tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict that is now grinding into its fourth year.

On Wednesday, before the Russian attack on Kyiv that killed eight and wounded dozens, it was Zelenskyy with whom Trump expressed frustration.

“It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that make it so difficult to settle this war,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country.”

The statements to which Trump was referring were Zelenskyy’s outright refusal to consider territorial concessions, including the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea which voted in a coerced referendum in 2014 to join Russia.

The spiraling disintegration of the peace process goes back to earlier in the week when both U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steven Witikoff cancelled their participation in a planned meeting with Ukrainian officials in London. Zelenskyy instead headed to South Africa to meet with that country’s president.

Last week, Secretary Rubio signaled that American patience for the stalling process is wearing thin, saying it is “not our war,” and the U.S. will “move on” if progress is not realized soon.

According to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, moving on may not be so easy.

“The President won’t be able to abandon Ukraine without paying a heavy political price,” the newspaper argued. “As the historian and Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin said in an interview recently, Americans hate war, but they hate losing a war even more,” it added.

In February, a Wall Street journal poll found that 69 percent of Republican view Russia as the aggressor in the conflict and 83 percent hold negative views of Putin.