Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to waive sweeping new sanctions on Russia, a move Zelenskyy said is “strengthening Putin’s war.”
“It’s really big support for Putin. He feels victory with [the removed] sanctions.” Zelenskyy told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday — adding that Ukraine is concerned that the U.S. may do more to ease the pressure on Russia including reevaluating restrictions on Russian energy sources and frozen assets.
Congress passed new, substantial sanctions on Russia in September in honor of late Sen. Lindsey Graham — who was one of the most outspoken allies for Ukraine during the country’s ongoing, four-year war against Russia’s invasion. Trump issued an executive order on Friday blocking the new penalties “in the national interests of the United States.”
Zelenskyy has faced strong criticism from Trump in recent weeks for continuing to strike Russian oil refineries and allegedly stalling peace negotiations to end the war. Trump has pinned skyrocketing global fuel prices in part on Ukraine’s strikes, but Zelenskyy repeatedly contends that the ongoing Iran war should bear the majority of blame.
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Earlier this month, Trump announced a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to import millions of tons of Russian diesel into the U.S., a move that compounded Zelenskyy’s concerns over the strength of U.S. support for Ukraine.
“If United States will support Putin, I mean, it’s unbelievable. It’s a tragedy. It’s a historic mistake and big tragedy,” Zelenskyy said Sunday — adding that if the U.S. takes Russia’s side “of course we will not prevail and we will not be able to stand.”
Zelenskyy told NBC that he still trusts Trump and the U.S., but he hopes that Trump “will change his decisions, change his attitude to Putin.”
In a post Sunday on Truth Social, Trump defended his decision to waive the sanctions as a “simple one” he made in an effort to bring Russia to the bargaining table for peace negotiations. He also repeated his accusations that Zelenskyy doesn’t want to end the war and rebuked Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil refineries.
“He doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” Trump wrote. “He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now. His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead. I WANT THIS WAR [to] END!”
The conflict between the two world leaders came to a head last week when Ukraine reported lapses in U.S. intelligence sharing and issues with technology contracted to Ukraine by the U.S. Department of Defense — allegations that the Trump administration has denied.
Ukraine stopped receiving U.S. intelligence, which can specifically provide an early warning when Russia uses ballistic missiles, for a period of three days, the Ukrainian president told NBC.
“It was blocked for some period of time,” Zelenskyy said. “And then it was deblocked by [the] American side. We are very thankful for this.”
Trump publicly denied that he or SpaceX founder Elon Musk, whose company develops the Starlink and Starshield satellite network used by Ukraine, ordered any restrictions on the technology for Ukraine’s operations — an assertion Zelenskyy strongly refuted on Sunday.
“Of course the message came from [the U.S.] government,” Zelenskyy said. “It’s not my opinion. It’s [the] opinion of our generals, of our government, and of course also my opinion they say that it was the message from [the] American government to limit this speed, and technically SpaceX did it.”
He added that Ukraine is still experiencing speed limitations for its drone operations.
After Zelenskyy’s interview, NBC spoke with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said the Ukrainian president “should be very careful about making statements like this that aren’t true” when speaking about any alleged U.S. involvement in the Starlink and Starshield restrictions.
“President Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio have categorically said that no one under the Trump administration did that, and I think it is very reckless for President Zelenskyy to make such a charge,” Bessent said Sunday.
Bessent defended the president’s move waiving the sanctions and called for tougher criticism on Ukraine’s allies in Europe that still import Russian resources — though the European Union’s overall reliance on Russia’s natural gas industry has dropped dramatically since the start of the war in 2022.
Bessent and Rubio pointed to Trump’s invocation of the statutory 60-day review period written into the Russian sanctions bill, which technically gives the administration until Dec. 16 to assess the penalties.
“The problem is these sanctions were not just sanctions on Russia. They include tariffs on a number of countries, India, for example, and others,” Rubio told reporters Saturday night at Joint Base Andrews before departing for Uzbekistan. “And so I think the president wants to take the 60-day period of time to sort of analyze what imposing both sanctions and tariffs will mean to the global economy and even to the U.S. economy.”
The White House has defended waiving the sanctions, asserting that enforcing the penalties could impede peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Energy Secretary Chris Wright reiterated this position Sunday in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“What President Trump is trying to do is find what different way will lead to peace,” Wright said. “He’s always looking for innovations. This is quite innovative, actually.”
Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Senate in Michigan, appeared to break with Trump over waiving the sanctions, following the lead of several other Republicans outraged over the move.
Rogers told CNN “that’s just not where I would be” and added that he would have voted for the sanctions bill if he was in the Senate. When asked if he was concerned that Trump’s recent moves to ease pressure on Russia make it appear that the U.S. is siding with Russia over Ukraine, Rogers said he does not believe Trump is siding with Russia.
“I do worry about the optics of it, but I understand what his motives are,” Rogers said. “And his motives are to try to get prices back down on diesel. Diesel is hurting us.”
This story has been updated with a Truth Social post by President Donald Trump.
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