Kyiv, Ukraine – Echoing the Kremlin, United States President Donald Trump is demanding that national elections be held in Ukraine as part of any peace deal while referring to the Ukrainian president as a “dictator”.“That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday while falsely saying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a 4 percent approval rating.
Moscow has said Zelenskyy’s five-year term was supposed to end in May and, therefore, he does not have the legal authority to sign a peace deal.
Martial law, which banned wartime elections, was declared in the former Soviet republic after Russia’s full-scale invasion of the East European nation nearly three years ago.
Zelenskyy hit back on Wednesday against Trump’s comments, saying: “If someone wants to replace me right away, it’s not possible right away.”
“If we are talking about 4 percent, then we’ve seen this disinformation. We understand that it comes from Russia, and we have evidence,” he said in televised remarks. Advertisement
As of the first half of February, according to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 57 percent of Ukrainians trust Zelenskyy as their president.
Spreading a pro-Russia ‘illusion’
Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch said Moscow’s motives for insisting on elections in Ukraine have less to do with championing the election rights of the Ukrainian people and more to do with control.
The Kremlin wants Ukraine to have “a government that will be more obedient, that will sign the [peace] deals the US will have drafted with Russia,” Kushch told Al Jaze …
