Zelensky warns Putin wants to ‘manipulate’ Trump on Ukraine

KYIV – Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on Jan 24 warned that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin wanted to “manipulate” Mr Donald Trump, after the Kremlin chief praised the US leader and said he was ready for talks with him.

Kyiv earlier warned against any Putin-Trump peace talks on the near three-year war without Ukrainian and European participation.

“He wants to manipulate the desire of the President of the United States of America to achieve peace,” Mr Zelensky said, during a daily evening address on social media.

“I am confident that no Russian manipulations will succeed any more.”

Mr Putin, who launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, was ready to continue the war and “manipulate the leaders of the world”.

Mr Putin had earlier praised Mr Trump as a “smart” leader who might have prevented the conflict from starting.

The Russian leader did not say when talks would take place, and the Kremlin on Jan 24 said it was still waiting for “signals” from Washington, despite Mr Trump announcing on Jan 23 he was willing to meet Mr Putin “immediately”.

“We have always said, and I want to emphasise this once again, that we are ready for these negotiations on Ukrainian issues,” Mr Putin told a reporter from Russian state TV.

Praising Mr Trump as a “smart” and “pragmatic” man, Mr Putin also repeated the Republican’s unfounded claim that he won the US presidential election against Mr Joe Biden in 2020.

“I cannot but agree with him that if he had been president – if his victory hadn’t been stolen in 2020 – then maybe there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that emerged in 2022,” Mr Putin said.

Pressure from Trump

The Ukraine conflict has plunged relations between the two nuclear powers to their lowest levels since the Cold War.

Mr Trump, who was inaugurated on Jan 20, has called the conflict “ridiculous” and threatened Russia with tougher economic sanctions if it does not agree to stop its offensive.

“If they don’t settle this war soon, like almost immediately, I’m going to put massive tariffs on Russia, and massive taxes, and also big sanctions,” the Republican said, during a Fox News interview on Jan 23.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on the same day, Mr Trump said he would ask Saudi Arabia and Opec to lower oil prices, claiming: “If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately.”

Mr Putin pushed back at Mr Trump’s claim that lower oil prices might expedite the end of the conflict.

“I have a hard time imagining there will be decisions taken that are detrimental to the American economy,” Mr Putin said on Jan 24.

‘Come back to reality’

Neither side has shown signs of de-escalating hostilities since Mr Trump’s inauguration, despite the President claiming he would end the conflict in “24 hours” once in power.

Kyiv on Jan 24 warned against being excluded from any talks.

“(Putin) wants to negotiate the fate of Europe – without Europe. And he wants to talk about Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Mr Andriy Yermak.

“This is not going to happen. Putin needs to come back to reality himself, or he will be brought back. This is not how it works in the modern world.”

Russian aerial attacks near Kyiv killed three people and wounded several others, Ukrainian officials said on Jan 24, while Ukraine fired 120 drones on at least 12 Russian regions, including the capital Moscow.

The Kremlin has launched drone or missile attacks at Kyiv almost every day since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, ostensibly targeting military and energy facilities.

“Three people were killed in an enemy attack in the Kyiv region,” the emergency service said in a statement on social media.

Fragments of a drone had struck a 10-storey residential building after the head of the region said a private home had also been hit, it added.

Black smoke billowed from a residential building damaged in the strike as rescue workers hauled out the bodies of the victims, official images from the scene showed.

In Russia, the Ukrainian military said it launched an overnight drone attack striking an oil refinery, power station facilities and an electronics plant.

State media reported that a microelectronics factory had halted work after six Ukrainian drones damaged production and storage facilities in the Bryansk region. AFP