Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Donald Trump of repeating Kremlin-inspired disinformation, after the US president falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.
Zelensky also said claims that only 4% of Ukrainians trust him, also came from Russia. While he declined to comment directly on the poll, he pointed to a recent survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, which found that 57% of Ukrainians trust him.
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“Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky said.
Trump finally used the words “Russia attacked,” but added that somehow Ukraine “shouldn’t have let him attack.” How exactly was Ukraine going to prevent Russia from attacking, one wonders?
Typical Trump: throw a thought out there to stir the pot like some kind of a social experiment and offer no concrete insights and answers.
Deadly disinformation
Admitting that Russia is the aggressor state doesn’t change Trump’s disturbing pro-Russian stance. The US joining Russia to vote against yesterday’s UN resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine feels as if we’ve entered an absurd alternate reality - yet it’s very much our reality.
Ukraine Strikes Russia, Occupied Crimea in Joint Strike
Trump has stopped pretending to be impartial. He has openly called Zelensky a “dictator without elections’’ who “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.” The second part of this statement sounds like straight out of a Mafiosi’s capo di tutti capi’s mouth.
It’s official. Donald Trump values his relationship with Russia much more than his relationship with Ukraine. Business? Blackmail? Imperial sentimentality? Senility? Gangsterism? All five? Who knows.
Trump is parroting Russian propaganda at an alarming rate. Moscow’s prime propagandists Solovyov and Skabeeva are emboldened and ecstatic. Sadly, for a good reason. Russians are smelling blood in the water. Trump not only appears to be, but IS literally stuck, in a Russian disinformation bubble.
Disinformation spaces, or bubbles, are a harmless nuisance if they affect some guy down at the bar, but things take a deadly turn when top government officials unquestioningly accept the noxious narrative permeating the disinformation bubble.
When you influence the top government officials to think the way you want them to, they are going to manifest the kind of reality you want them to, regardless of how absurd that reality is. VIPs have the power to do that, and all propagandists understand this. Russian mouthpieces excel in the art of brainwashing foreign VIPs.
Yes, Russian propagandists are cartoonish at times.
Case in point, a female Russian propagandist talking about the Donbas being bombed by Ukrainians, with supposed bombing sounds in the distance, only for the psychological operation to be revealed as failing studio equipment. She then mockingly stuck her tongue out at the audience.
These mechanical mishaps don’t change the fact that the Russian propaganda machine is a brainwashing behemoth that successfully sells absurd narratives to hundreds of millions of people across the world. Indeed, even if foreign VIPs don’t believe the narrative, that doesn’t really matter when millions of potential voters believe whatever the Russian propaganda machine is selling. Politicians being politicians are likely going to publicly espouse the views of their constituents, regardless of what they privately believe.
Some people prefer to live in denial, some are opportunists, and some are deluded into loving the alleged imperial greatness of the enemy.
Parallels between Trump and FDR
Jan Karski was a Polish scholar, diplomat and Resistance fighter during the Second World War. Most importantly, he was the messenger who brought news of the then-secret Holocaust to the world when there was still time to stop it.
In 1943, Karski traveled to London and Washington to meet with Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Karski was told Churchill was too busy; he was passed off to the British foreign secretary. Karski met with FDR - who addressing him as “young man” inquired about the fate of Poland’s horses, but did not ask a single question about Karski’s horrifying revelation of the German Nazi death camps.
Breaking the fake – does it even matter?
That was eighty years ago. It’s a million times worse in 2025, with disinformation running rampant to the point of making one wonder if “breaking the fake” even makes sense anymore. Maybe it’s better to preach exclusively to the converted and forget the rest, since there’s no viable way to reach them, anyway.
The rest have constructed a fake reality where Bucha is a British psychological operation and Bucha survivors are actors. Can we break the propaganda spell? Not likely without shock therapy, i.e. visiting the places of Russian war crimes or talking to the survivors, particularly children. And even that is no guarantee.
Russia, by the virtue of being an empire in the minds of the deluded, is trustworthy. In the minds of the hopelessly deluded, the so-called puppet states (one could use another word here to get the point across even more vividly) such as Ukraine or Poland should sit down and shut up.
Trump claims to love Poland but words are just words. He also claims to love Ukraine. Polish and Ukrainian officials trusting the assurances of the Trump administration is a foolish gamble, indeed, unless it’s just for public relations purposes. Trump proclaiming to love a particular nation seems more and more like a kiss of death than anything else.
In that precarious geopolitical context, the analysts ought to look not just months and years ahead – the threat might be lurking just around the corner. That’s our blind spot. We always seem to be looking far into the future, coming up with scenarios, while ignoring the present. Russia knows this and might strike much earlier than we think, leaving us shocked, divided and unprepared to respond.
The worst-case scenario is here
Cooperation with Donald Trump is critically important but there are glaring signs that the President of the most powerful nation on the planet has been brainwashed by Russian propaganda. As such, it’s time to find alternative solutions. There’s just no other way. The worst-case scenario seems to be materializing in front of our eyes.
If Trump joins Vladimir Putin for Moscow’s Victory Parade on May 9, then there really is nothing else to add. The thought of him standing right next to decorated Russian war criminals – guilty of rapes, castrations and murders in Ukraine - can it get more surreal than that?
Donald Trump the grand strategist?
We can hope it’s some grand strategy on Trump’s part to lull Putin into letting his guard down, only to then strike hard. Yes, but let’s be real this is giving him way too much credit.
AS the saying goes: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
If Russia manages to take over Europe, all the useful idiots welcoming the arrival of Russian tanks are going to be mercilessly exploited, then tortured and eliminated – for fun.
Sadly, enslaved Ukrainians are likely going to be a part of the invading Russian army by then. If only all the useful idiots understood what they are doing by supporting, even worshipping Putin’s Russia. Indeed, the realization of their foolishness is going to hit them hard as they writhe in agony on their way to execution. Alas, by then, it will all be too late.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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