Thursday Briefing
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/briefing/trump-zelensky-pope-gaza.html
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Trump and Zelensky traded blows in an escalating feud
President Trump yesterday called Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator” who had taken money from the U.S. to go to war with Russia. In a social media post littered with falsehoods, Trump didn’t mention President Vladimir Putin, or that Russia had seized some Ukrainian territory in 2014 before its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Trump also suggested that the future security of Ukraine would not be an American problem.
“This War is far more important to Europe than it is to us,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation.”
The feud began after White House and Kremlin officials in Saudi Arabia began peace talks that excluded Ukraine. After that meeting on Tuesday, Trump suggested that Ukraine had started the war. Afterward, Zelensky said Trump had been “caught in a web of disinformation.”
E.U.: Leaders met yesterday for a second emergency meeting seeking to recalibrate relations with the U.S. as Trump moved closer to Russia.