‘Kremlin whisperers’ have the president’s ear and dissenters are few – but a thin skin and self-interest are also at play

Donald Trump’s tarring of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” who is to blame for the war with Russia, plunging Ukraine into a Darwinian struggle for its very existence, landed like a bombshell on the diplomatic landscape. But it did not come out of nowhere.

The US president has left the already badly frayed western alliance in disarray with a devastating social media attack on his Ukrainian counterpart, just hours after he had already implicitly blamed Kyiv for Russia’s invasion.

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/20/trump-zelenskyy-putin-ukraine-russia