Ukraine war live: Musk becomes latest Trump attack dog to slur Zelensky in cruel rant

Ukrainians have responded with alarm to Donald Trump’s claim that they are living under a “dictator” – with the US president now pushing a favoured propaganda line of the Kremlin.

“Yes, he’s not a perfect president, but he’s not a dictator,” Kateryna Karaush, a 25-year-old tech worker from Kyiv, told the Associated Press, adding: “It feels like the whole world is against us.”

Larysa, a 52-year-old resident from the northeastern city of Kharkiv, told the news agency: “We have a president whom we support. During war, we are united.”

And Valerii Pekar, a professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, said: “Holding elections before a peace agreement with security guarantees is signed would be devastating for Ukraine. The US and Russia are now united in promoting the idea of ‘elections first, then peace’ – which is the quickest and cheapest way to bring Ukraine down.”

Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly rejected Donald Trump’s initial demand to take Ukraine’s minerals in compensation for US support against Russia’s invasion.

Warning that the deal offer was “not serious” and did not provide any specific security guarantees in return for the coveted resources, which include lithium and titanium, Mr Zelensky said: “I can’t sell our state.”

And the Ukrainian president noted that the US had supplied his country with $67bn (£53bn) worth of weapons and $31.5bn in direct budget support since Russia’s invasion three years ago – far short of the sums now demanded by Mr Trump.

“You can’t call this $500bn and ask us to return $500bn in minerals or something else. This is not a serious conversation,” Mr Zelensky said.

But Mr Zelensky has said he is willing to do a deal.

Ukraine is sitting on one of Europe’s largest deposits of critical minerals, including lithium and titanium, much of which is untapped. Mr Zelensky has been trying for years to develop these resources, estimated to be worth more than £12 trillion, based on figures provided by Forbes Ukraine.

In 2021, he offered outside investors tax breaks and investment rights to help mine these minerals. These efforts were suspended when Russia invaded a year later.

Anticipating the notoriously transactional Mr Trump might take an interest in this, Mr Zelensky then placed the mining of these minerals into his victory plan, which was drawn up last year.

Donald Trump and his allies have launched a barrage of false attacks on Volodymyr Zelensky this week, in a row which appears to have begun after Ukraine was left out of peace talks between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.

Following Mr Trump’s three-hour call with Vladimir Putin, the US president began echoing Kremlin propaganda in suggesting that Kyiv was to blame for Russia’s invasion – prompting Mr Zelensky to warn that Mr Trump was living in a “disinformation” bubble.

Mr Trump furiously lashed out at the Ukrainian president as a “modestly successful comedian” and “dictator” whose only skill was “playing Joe Biden like a fiddle”. In further remarks to journalists, he claimed that Russia “holds the cards” in the ongoing war.

Following this tirade, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz claimed Mr Zelensky should “tone down” his criticism of Mr Trump and sign a deal handing the US $500bn of Ukraine’s rare minerals.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s new ally Elon Musk used his social media platform X to attack Mr Zelensky for posing with his wife in a Vogue photoshoot three years ago while Ukrainians were “dying in trenches”.

Echoing Mr Trump’s earlier claims, Musk then accused Mr Zelensky of running a “massive graft machine feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers”.

“He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of all Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election. In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine,” the X boss claimed.

When it was pointed out to him by X users that a recent survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed Mr Zelensky as having a 57 percent approval rating, Musk railed against his own website’s fact-checking feature, claiming: “Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media. Working to fix this.”

After Elon Musk vowed to fix his social media platform X’s “community notes” feature, claiming it was being “gamed” by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, social media users criticised the tech tycoon for his hypocrisy on free speech.

Mr Musk made the remarks after Donald Trump sparked outrage by accusing the Ukrainian president of being a dictator and started the war with Russia.

The US president also falsely claimed that Mr Zelensky had only a four per cent approval rating in his country.

A survey carried out this month by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that Zelensky had a 57 percent approval rating.

Mr Musk responded to this saying: “It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!! In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election.”

In a post on X, he said, “Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media. Working to fix this.”

Criticising Mr Musk for his remarks, senior BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh said: “Elon Musk says he’s going to ‘fix’ community notes because he disagrees with a note on President Trump’s claim that Zelensky has a 4% approval rating.”

Members of the Ukrainian opposition have stepped in to defend president Volodymyr Zelensky in the face of Donald Trump’s false claim that he is a “dictator” because Ukraine is currently unable to hold elections as a result of Russia’s war.

“We may have different opinions about Zelenskyy, but only Ukrainian citizens have the right to judge his support,” Yaroslav Zhelezniak, from opposition party Holos, told the Associated Press. “And to publicly criticise him too, because, in the end, he is our elected leader.”

Volodymyr Ariev, from the opposition European Solidarity party, told the news agency: “Elections are not needed right now because they should only take place when we understand the framework of [a peace] agreement with Russia.

“Holding elections now would only benefit the Kremlin, further dividing Ukrainians and installing a new president who could sign a deal favourable to Moscow.”

An adviser to Mr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak warned further that Russia might seek to interfere in an electoral process that would already face significant challenges.

Millions of displaced Ukrainians living abroad would struggle to participate, as well as the hundreds of thousands Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territories.

Around 800,000 Ukrainians are currently serving in the armed forces, making it difficult for them to cast ballots without weakening the military. And those fighting would be unable to run for office – a right guaranteed under Ukrainian law.

A Ukrainian audience member on the BBC’s weekly Question Time programme broke down in tears as she described how her family had been separated due to Russia’s invasion.

On a special programme episode discussing the war on Thursday, a woman responded to a question that asked whether Ukrainian refugees should be allowed to stay in the UK after the conflict ends.

Visibly emotional, she told the panel: “I wish I would see my family all together” and described how her parents live on the frontline in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine.

Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to swiftly ramp up UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’ve never known a time like this, it is probably one of the most alarming times for Britain’s defence and security since the Second World War, with our closest ally changing their position.

“So we have to debate it, it is going to be difficult. I don’t think there’s an easy solution, but we have put some ideas on the table.

“One idea we have put is to increase the digital services taxes, a tax on about 20 multinational companies with turnovers of over £500m and we would raise it from the current 2 per cent to 10 per cent.

“That would raise the vast bulk of what you’d need to move quickly to the 2.5 per cent of national income spending on our defence and our country’s defence.”

Sir Ed also said he wanted to see Russian assets which have been frozen across Europe since the war began used instead to support Ukraine and build up British defences.

Russia’s Security Council has claimed that threats to Russian port infrastructure from Nato have intensified, and that overall threats to maritime security had increased since Moscow invaded Ukraine, according to state news agency RIA.

Ukraine’s air force shot down 87 drones, with 70 more probably lost to electronic countermeasures, the country’s military said, as it responded to another vast overnight attack in which Russia launched 160 drones and two missiles.

Russian forces also used two ballistic missiles to attack Ukraine’s southern region of Odesa, the Ukrainian military added.

The prime minister would not be reflecting the views of the British people if he did not speak frankly with Donald Trump during his upcoming a visit to Washington, the leader of the Liberal Democrats have warned.

Sir Ed Davey told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “It is a very difficult visit there’s no doubt about that, but I do think you have to speak to your friends honestly and openly.

“The threat that Donald Trump poses to our economy and security is as serious as I can ever remember.

“Whether it’s the threat of terror to our country, indeed to our friends in the Commonwealth and Europe, or whether it’s what he’s saying with President Putin and Russia and Ukraine, I think we’re all astonished and deeply alarmed.

“And if the British prime minister doesn’t reflect that, he’s not reflecting the views of the British people.”