President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine appealed to the Trump administration on Wednesday to respect the truth and avoid disinformation in discussing the war that began with a Russian invasion of his country, in his first response to President Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine had started the war.
“I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,” Mr. Zelensky said in some of the most pointed criticism yet of Mr. Trump and the new American administration, which on Tuesday opened peace talks with Russia that excluded Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky said that the U.S. president was “living in a disinformation space” and in a “circle of disinformation.”
Mr. Zelensky made the remarks to a group of reporters he had summoned to his presidential office in Kyiv, a building still fortified with sandbags to avoid blasts from Russian missiles.
He was responding to a flurry of accusatory statements on Tuesday, some of them false, by Mr. Trump. He said of Ukraine’s leadership and the war, “You should have never started it,” and appeared to embrace what has been a Russian demand that Ukraine hold elections before some stages of talks. Elections were suspended under martial law after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Mr. Trump also said that Mr. Zelensky’s approval rating was 4 percent. Mr. Zelensky said that was not true, citing polls showing far higher support. In one conducted in December by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, for example, 52 percent of Ukrainians said that they trusted Mr. Zelensky’s leadership.
