In a striking press conference at the White House on April 14, US President Donald Trump took direct aim at Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, accusing him of igniting the war with Russia and then turning to Washington and Europe for military aid he was never equipped to earn on the battlefield. Speaking beside El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, Trump’s comments once again placed him in stark contrast with the current bipartisan establishment support for Ukraine, as he laid out a scathing critique of Zelensky’s leadership, the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy, and the broader trajectory of the conflict.

“He’s always looking to purchase missiles,” Trump remarked, referring to Zelensky’s renewed request for US-made Patriot air defense systems, which he hopes to purchase or lease with the financial assistance of European allies. “When you start a war, you got to know that you can win the war. You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.”

This statement marks one of the strongest public rebukes of Zelensky by a sitting US president and underscores Trump’s broader skepticism of Washington’s open-ended military and financial support for Ukraine. Trump, who has long maintained that the war would have never erupted had he been in office, reiterated his belief that Zelensky miscalculated by engaging in a military standoff with a vastly superior Russian force, without a realistic strategy or the necessary resources to sustain such a conflict.

Trump’s assertion that Zelensky “started the war” directly contradicts the dominant Western narrative,........

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