Trump Says He’d Handle Ukraine ‘Differently’ Ahead of UN Meeting
(Bloomberg) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would approach Ukraine policy "differently" and marveled at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's requests for security assistance.
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"I see Zelenskiy is here. I think Zelenskiy is the greatest salesman in history — every time he comes into the country, he walks away with $60 billion," Trump said during a rally on Monday in Pennsylvania ahead of the United Nations General Assembly.
Trump added that he believed the Ukrainian leader wanted his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, to win the election "so badly" and said he would look to push Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table if he won the election.
"If I win this election, the first thing I'm going to do is call up Zelenskiy and call up President Putin and I say, 'You got to make a deal, this is crazy,'" Trump said at the event in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
Trump's comments came as Zelenskiy is set to meet with Harris and President Joe Biden on Thursday to present his "victory plan" to end the war started by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zelenskiy plans to ask the US to support another push to join the NATO alliance and commit to a sustained supply of advanced weapons.
Earlier: Zelenskiy Starts US Trip at Munitions Plant in Pennsylvania
Zelenskiy, who toured a Pennsylvania ammunition plant on Sunday, suggested in an interview that Trump did not understand the complexity of the conflict and had made "political statements" during his debate against Harris, in which the Republican sidestepped a question about whether he wanted Kyiv to prevail in the conflict.
"My feeling is that Trump doesn't really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how," Zelenskiy told the New Yorker. "With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand."
The Ukrainian leader also called Trump's running mate, JD Vance, "too radical" and criticized the US senator from Ohio for advocating for a demilitarized zone between Ukraine and Russia.
"The idea that the world should end this war at Ukraine's expense is unacceptable," Zelenskiy said. "But I do not consider this concept of his a plan, in any formal sense. This would be an awful idea, if a person were actually going to carry it out, to make Ukraine shoulder the costs of stopping the war by giving up its territories."
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