'Very, very, very strange': Trump's ex-envoy weirded out by recent Ukraine statements

Donald Trump's former special envoy to Ukraine reacted to the president's "strange and divergent" comments about the country and its leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Kurt Volker, who had been a key witness in Trump's first impeachment inquiry over his Ukraine extortion scheme, pointed to a Truth Social post the president made shortly after his inauguration threatening taxes, tariffs and sanctions against Russia if an agreement couldn't be reached to end the war – which stands in stark contrast to his threats against Zelenskyy.

"It's really striking, it is such a divergence from what Trump himself said just on his first full day in office," Volker said. "If you remember that tweet on Jan. 21, he said that Putin needs to stop the war, that it should never have happened, and that he's prepared to escalate with sanctions if he doesn't, and now he launches this tweet where he doesn't mention Russia at all. The real dictator in the room here is Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for 25 years, not Zelenskyy, and it is Russia that launched this unprovoked invasion against Ukraine, not the other way around – so very, very, very, very strange and divergent from where Trump himself was."

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Trump's former UN ambassador Nikki Haley posted on X that his remarks calling Zelenskyy a "dictator" were "classic Russian talking points," and Volker speculated the president was angry that his Ukrainian counterpart had rejected his terms on ending the war.

"I think that there is probably a lot of pique at president Zelenskyy because Zelenskyy pushed back on some things, and, you know, Trump just always wants to push for what he's trying to achieve," Volker said. "When he had J.D. Vance at Munich and there was some reaction to that, he gave Zelenskyy an ultimatum on minerals that was really very one-sided and very poorly written, and Zelenskyy rejected that and made some counter proposals."

"Then he said that Trump is living in a disinformation space, so I think all of those things created this sense of pique from Trump that he wanted to lash out," Volker added. "But does that really advance American interests, as you're asking? Uh, I think it doesn't, because ultimately, what we need to do is get to a place where we have an end of the war in Ukraine, as Trump has said many, many times. We have a prevention of future war, meaning there is a deterrent effect in place again, so Putin doesn't attack again, and that we shift more of the burdens to our European allies so we don't have to carry as much, which they're not going to do if they're very, very unhappy."

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