Donald Trump’s treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during their tense meeting at the White House last week was “wrong,” former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.
Speaking in his first interview since losing last July’s general election, the ex-PM criticized the U.S. president’s repeated lambasting of Zelenskyy — and questioned his approach to ending the war in Ukraine.
“It was very hard to watch,” Sunak told the BBC’s Nick Robinson when pressed on the chaotic Oval Office scenes, in which Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, berated Zelenskyy for a perceived lack of gratitude to the United States.
“As someone who has spent a lot of time with Volodymyr, been in Kyiv with him, has seen what he has had to go through for his country … to see him be called a dictator, told he started this war, for him to be treated that way was wrong,” said Sunak.
Last month, Trump branded Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections,” falsely claimed he had poor approval ratings, and has pressed ahead with peace talks with Ukraine’s invader, Russia. He softened his tone towards Zelenskyy in an address to Congress Tuesday, but only after pulling U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Sunak, who now sits as a backbench Conservative MP, visited Ukraine twice as prime minister and was a key supporter of Kyiv while in No. 10 Downing Street, a policy which has continued under his Labour successor Keir Starmer.
Sunak told the BBC that he recognized Europe needs to take more responsibility for its own defense — a key demand of the Trump team.
“We can’t expect America to bear any burden for our security if we are not prepared to make those sacrifices ourselves,” he said. “What has happened over the last few weeks has been clarifying, and we have just had to be open and honest about that now.”
Politico
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