The Ukrainian leader wants “decision-makers” to come and witness the fighting
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has offered to give Donald Trump a tour of Kiev’s battlefront with Russian forces, saying America’s leading opposition presidential candidate should see the conflict with his own eyes before making policy decisions.
“If he will come, I’m ready even to go with him to the frontline,” Zelensky said on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference. “I think if we are in dialogue how to finish the war, we have to demonstrate to people who are decision-makers, what does it mean – the real war, not in Instagram.”
Trump is currently polling as the leading Republican candidate to face Democrat incumbent Joe Biden in this year’s US presidential election. The former US president has repeatedly claimed that he would end the conflict in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office again by forcing Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate.
The Ukrainian leader mocked those claims at least twice in the past several months, suggesting that Trump should visit his country to see the scale of the conflict for himself. “If he can come here, I will need 24 minutes – yes, 24 minutes – to explain President Trump that he can’t manage this war,” Zelensky said in November.
He made a similar statement in January, saying, “Yes, please, Donald Trump: I invite you to Ukraine, to Kiev. If you can stop the war during 24 hours, I think it will be enough to come to Kiev, on any day I am here.”
Zelensky stopped short of criticizing the former US leader on Saturday and referred to him as “Mr. Trump,” perhaps seeking to avoid alienating him. Even as he battles four criminal indictments and several civil cases, Trump is leading Biden in multiple polls. He has urged congressional Republicans not to approve additional Ukraine aid and has argued that Washington should instead push to end the conflict.
US House lawmakers left Washington for a two-week vacation on Friday without approving an emergency spending bill that includes $60 billion in additional Ukraine aid. The Biden administration ran out of money for Kiev last month, after using up $113 billion in previously approved aid packages.
Biden blamed Republicans for this week’s fall of Avdeevka, a key Ukrainian stronghold near Russia’s Donetsk. Ukrainian troops had to retreat from the besieged city because “congressional inaction” left them short of ammunition, Biden claimed on Saturday.
