Why Trump's election call put Kyiv's legitimacy in question
A retrospective on 19 February 2025, when U.S. rhetoric toward Ukraine's president sharpened as Washington and Moscow opened direct talks.
What did it mean for Ukraine when the U.S. president escalated his language against Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 19 February 2025? The day brought together several threads of the diplomacy over ending the war, and Kyiv was not at the centre of them.
On 19 February 2025, Donald Trump, President of the United States, called Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, a "dictator" and said he had done a "terrible job". He also warned that Zelenskyy was "not going to have a country left" soon. The remarks came amid deteriorating relations between the two countries.
They followed a demand from the previous day. On 18 February 2025, Trump called for a new presidential election in Ukraine as part of a peace deal with Russia. Taken together, the two statements tied the question of Ukrainian political legitimacy to the terms of a settlement.
The constitutional constraint
The election demand ran into Ukrainian law. Presidential elections had been scheduled for March or April 2024, but martial law has been in effect since 24 February 2022, and Ukrainian law does not allow presidential elections while it lasts. Parliament has approved extensions in 90-day intervals. Later, the 20th extension ran until 31 October 2026.
Moscow's reading
The Russian side presented the same week as progress. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, praised the high-level U.S.–Russia talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a "first step" towards restoring full diplomatic ties with the United States. On 17 February 2025, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov had said that Europe had no role in any peace negotiations on ending the war.
What the day showed
The picture on 19 February 2025 was of a negotiating track in which Washington and Moscow were talking directly, Russia was excluding Europe from the process, and Ukraine's leader faced public criticism from the U.S. president and a call for an election that Ukrainian law barred under martial law.
