U.S. President Donald Trump has appeared to accuse Ukraine of being responsible for the war with Russia, amid a barrage of claims from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Speaking to reporters, Trump also made claims about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy, echoing another narrative frequently promoted by the Kremlin.

The speech came after U.S. and Russian officials held high-level talks on ending the war in Ukraine in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday, a meeting from which Kyiv was excluded.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky later accused Trump of echoing Russian disinformation about the war and asserted while addressing reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday that any effort to replace him "will not work."

Trump’s False Claims About Ukraine’s Role in Russia-Ukraine War

The heated skirmish of sentiments came after Donald Trump said on Tuesday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, “Today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited. Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal.’”

The U.S. president said a “half-baked” negotiator could have secured a settlement years ago “without the loss of much land.”

The incorrect claim that Ukraine started the war has long been repeated by the Kremlin and its supporters. The conflict began in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula, and began sponsoring pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow then...

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