Volodymyr Zelenskyy woke up on Saturday to one of the most direct public challenges any sitting leader has had from a major ally. US President Donald Trump told reporters outside the White House that it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president,” just before he left for a rally in Tennessee.
The remark came within 24 hours of a fuel agreement that Zelenskyy had loudly condemned.
What Trump said about Zelenskyy
Trump said Ukraine should “get a new leader who can make a deal,” arguing that Zelenskyy could have made many deals and never does. He also said Zelenskyy was stirring up trouble for the world, and he blamed him for pushing up diesel costs for American farmers and ranchers.
Trump went further and said the war would never have started had he been in office in 2022, calling it a result of incompetence. He also said Zelenskyy had lost 30% of his country and that more than two million people had been killed. Those numbers are Trump’s own claims, and he gave no source for them in the remarks as reported.
The Washington Post reported that Trump said Zelenskyy could have settled the war many times over and chooses not to, and tied his complaint to Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries.
The diesel deal behind the clash
The row traces back to Friday, October 9. Trump announced on social media that he had struck a deal with Vladimir Putin during a phone call that was expected to cover a suspected plague case in Russia. Under the terms he laid out, Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, then 500,000 tons in November and a million tons right after that, with another three million tons to follow.
Washington moved fast on the paperwork. The Treasury Department issued a general licence under which US sanctions will not apply to Russian diesel already loaded on tankers as of Friday, running until April 2027. It is the first easing on diesel since the start of the war to last longer than the usual 30-day window.
The economics are modest next to the politics. A German outlet worked out that 300,000 tons would cover only about 14 hours of American diesel consumption. But the pressure at home is real. Diesel prices are up about 70% since the US-Iran conflict began, and the midterm elections were only 24 days away when the deal was announced.
For weeks, Trump had been pressing Kyiv to stop hitting Russian energy sites. CBS News noted that he pinned the blame for high diesel prices on Ukraine’s refinery strikes even though the war in Iran is also in play.
How Zelenskyy responded
Zelenskyy did not wait for the president’s comments to speak up. On Friday, he warned that Russia would “repay” the diesel with further terror and perfidy, and said easing sanctions without a clear de-escalation agreement is plain weakness.
He also put an offer on the table. Ukraine’s armed forces will not hit Russian oil refineries if the Kremlin stops destroying Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, he said, as long as the arrangement runs both ways.
Saturday brought a sharper tone. Zelenskyy wrote on X that Russia had thanked Washington for the sanctions relief by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia, and he said different signals were needed. He added that he had spoken to Emmanuel Macron about shoring up air defences and warned of more missile strikes in the coming days.
The human cost that day was heavy. Russian strikes killed at least 20 people in the Zaporizhzhia region, three of them children, and wounded at least 18. Missiles also hit Kyiv in a daytime attack, injuring four people, according to Mayor Vitalii Klitschko. More than 60 people have died in Russian bombardments over the past four days.
Kyiv pushes back on the call for a new president
Ukrainian officials were quick to close ranks. Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said on X that Zelenskyy has the support of Ukrainians, that the choice belongs to them, and that criticism from abroad only shows he is doing his job well.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, told ABC that Trump’s remarks are not being taken seriously in Ukraine.
There is also a practical problem with the idea. A US president cannot remove a foreign head of state. Under Ukrainian law, national elections cannot be held while martial law is in force, and martial law has been in place since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Any change in leadership would have to come through Ukraine’s own political process.
Reaction in Washington and Europe
Not everyone in Trump’s own political camp is comfortable with the diesel deal. Former Vice President Mike Pence said it makes no sense, urged Trump to rescind it, and said America should not throw a lifeline to Putin’s war machine.
Europe’s response has been more careful. Downing Street said the UK would keep up pressure on Russia through its toughest sanctions regime, without directly criticising Trump. Zelenskyy has had complaints closer to home as well, pointing to the EU’s decision to lift sanctions on two Russian oligarchs, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman.
The Kremlin sounded pleased. A statement on the Kremlin website said Putin confirmed Russia’s readiness to supply oil and petroleum products to the United States. Another Kremlin readout said the call gave significant attention to the prospects of resolving the Ukrainian crisis, and also covered Iran.
This is far from the first time Trump and Zelenskyy have clashed in public. In February 2025, a joint press conference was cancelled after a shouting match in the Oval Office involving the two men and Vice President JD Vance. The two met again at the NATO summit in Ankara in July, where they held bilateral talks on July 8, 2026.
Diplomacy was also moving in parallel this week. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner met Ukrainian officials in Miami on Friday to discuss a proposal to end the war. On the same day, Zelenskyy hosted a bipartisan US congressional delegation in Kyiv.
