Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday said that Donald Trump was living in a Russian “disinformation” bubble, responding to scathing comments by the US president about Zelensky’s popularity rating.

The Ukrainian leader also accused Washington of helping end Russian President Vladimir Putin’s international isolation, and said he wanted security guarantees from Kyiv’s allies that could enable the war to end this year.

“Unfortunately, President Trump, for whom we have great respect as leader of the American people… lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv, accusing Moscow of misleading Trump.

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Calling for presidential elections in Ukraine, which are banned under martial law, Trump said Zelensky was “down at four percent approval rating”.

Zelensky said the figure “comes from Russia”.

A telephone poll of 1,000 people by the respected Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, published on Wednesday, found that 57 percent of respondents trusted Zelensky, while 37 percent said they did not and the rest were undecided.

He vowed to show the opinion polls to Trump’s team as it was “important for us to convey the truth” to the new US administration.

Trump’s comments came after the US and Russian foreign ministers held talks in Saudi Arabia — their first face-to-face meeting since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 — on resetting relations and finding a way to end the conflict.

“I believe that the United States helped Putin to break out of years of isolation,” Zelensky said, in another criticism of Kyiv’s most important financial and military backer.

“All of this has no positive impact on Ukraine,” he said of the US-Russian rapprochement.

Nevertheless, Zelensky said he was still pushing for solid “security guarantees” from the West that could allow a ceasefire to be struck in 2025.

“We want security guarantees this year, because we want to end the war this year,” he said.

AFP