(The Hill) — Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley admonished her 2024 election rival, President Donald Trump, over his stance on Ukraine and recent comments directed at the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump appeared to blame Zelensky and the country’s leadership on Tuesday for the war in Eastern Europe as it nears its three-year anniversary. He doubled down on his criticism of Ukraine’s leader on Wednesday, claiming he has done a “terrible job” of leading the war-torn country and accusing him of taking advantage of Washington with all of the aid the U.S. has forked over in the last three years.
Haley, who eventually endorsed Trump in 2024, characterized the president’s remarks as “classic Russian talking points” and “exactly what Putin wants.”
Trump escalated his jabs against Zelensky as a group of U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, met with their Russian counterparts on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia. They began peace talks, seeking to restart a relationship with Moscow, one that diminished following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Kyiv did not have a representative at the meeting.
The commander-in-chief on Wednesday called Zelensky a “dictator,” slamming him for not holding nationwide elections and claiming his approval rating dropped to single digits.
With Ukraine under martial law, elections cannot take place. A Wednesday poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) showed that 57 percent of Ukrainians trust their president.
Zelensky fired back at Trump’s Tuesday comments, saying he is living in a Russian “disinformation space.”
Haley, a foreign policy hawk who after the election joined the Hudson Institute think tank, has previously said support for Ukraine is in the U.S. national interest and has backed Kyiv to eventually join the NATO military alliance.
Trump has gotten pushback regarding his recent rhetoric on Ukraine from his former vice president and 2024 primary election rival Mike Pence.
“Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth,” Pence wrote on Wednesday.
Some Republican senators have also been unnerved by Trump’s recent public comments, praising Zelensky’s leadership and reiterating that Russia started the invasion in 2022, eight years after annexing Crimea.
“Zelensky is frustrated, but he’s also been the right head of state for the time. He’s kept a nation together focused on Russian occupiers, and I think we should give them a fair amount of credit for that work,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, days after visiting Kyiv alongside some Senate Democrats.
