Oleg Davygora13:50, 12.01.26

He claims that if it weren’t for his involvement, it could have escalated into World War III.

US President Donald Trump again stated that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy has “no cards.”

Answering a journalist’s question, he reiterated his February statement: “You have no cards,” and emphasized that Zelenskyy had none from day one. When asked if anything had changed, the president replied categorically: “No, no.” In his opinion, the only “card” Zelenskyy truly has is Donald Trump himself. 

“He only has one thing. If he didn’t have Donald Trump, it would be a complete disaster, and he knows it, and European leaders know it, and everyone knows it,” he said in an interview with  The New York Times .

Trump stressed that Washington is doing “everything it can” and has no deadlines regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war.

“If we do everything in our power, I just wouldn’t want to see a war. For us, it’s not, I think, if I hadn’t been involved, I think it could have escalated into World War III. Things were going very, very badly. That’s not going to happen again,” Trump said.

He believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to make a deal.

“I’ve had cases where I’d already decided everything for Putin, but Zelenskyy didn’t want to make a deal, which shocked me. You saw a small example of that, sitting right here. Then there were cases where it was the other way around. I think now they both want to make a deal, but we’ll figure that out,” the politician noted.

He also answered the question of whether the US is prepared to rearm Ukraine if Putin rejects the “peace plan”:

“I don’t want to say that. I just don’t want to be in a situation where I have to say that, because I have to see if I can save lives. You know, war doesn’t cost us anything. We’re making money off of war now, and even after Biden spent $350 billion, which I think is a significant amount, you know, I made a deal.”

He recalled that he had concluded a deal with Ukraine on rare earth elements.

“I said I want to return this money because Biden is a fool. He’s a fool, and he gave you $350 billion, and I told Ukraine—that’s one of the reasons he wasn’t very happy with me here. I said, ‘I want to return this money to America.’ And I made a rare earths deal that could be worth a lot more. I returned the money. But this fool gave you $350 billion,” the president said.

Trump claims that the United States sells weapons to Ukraine and that it pays full price for them.

“I’m not even selling to them. I’m selling to NATO. And, as you know, I take 2 to 5 percent—NATO has a lot of money now. But—I’m not doing this for that. I’m doing this because I want to see—I want to save 25,000 to 30,000 lives a month. I can’t believe it. Take a stadium and fill it with 35,000 people, multiplied by two. I mean, that’s half a stadium, a large NFL stadium—half of those people die every month. It’s absurd,” he added.

(c)UNIAN 2025