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Members of Donald Trump’s team reportedly held secret discussions with Volodymyr Zelensky’s top political opponents days after his fiery White House clash with the Ukrainian president.
At least four senior allies of the US president spoke with Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko and high-ranking party members of Mr Zelensky’s predecessor Petro Porshenko, according to Politico, citing three Ukrainian parliamentarians and a US Republican foreign policy expert.
While Ms Tymoshenko has served Ukraine as a prime minister formerly and leads the opposition Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, Mr Porshenko is one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen who lost to Mr Zelensky in the 2019 elections and is facing charges of treason.
Click here for the latest updates on the Ukraine war
The talks between Mr Trump’s allies and the Ukrainian leaders focussed on whether Ukraine could hold swift presidential elections, the report added.
According to a top Republic foreign policy expert, Mr Trump’s trusted allies are looking for a leader in Ukraine who can be “easier to work with”, he told Politico, in a shift from the current leadership in Kyiv that has continued to seek all means to fight against Vladimir Putin’s three-year old invasion.
“Poroshenko’s people and Yulia, they’re all talking to Trump World, positioning themselves as people who would be easier to work with. And people who would consent to many of the things that Zelensky is not agreeing to,” the Republican foreign policy expert said on the condition of anonymity.
Vladimir Putin has insisted that he will not negotiate with Mr Zelensky, branding him an “illegitimate leader” because he has continued beyond his presidential term of four years in the war-hit nation.
Ukraine cannot hold elections under martial law, according to the democratic nation’s constitution. In 2023, all Ukrainian deputies signed a legal agreement that no election should take place until at least six months after the conclusion of the conflict.
Mr Trump’s aides are confident that the Ukrainian president would lose any elections, if held in the country today, claiming that Ukraine is facing war fatigue and public discontentment over widespread corruption, reported Politico.
However, the recent weeks of declining American support have skyrocketed Mr Zelensky’s approval ratings, especially after the White House spat where Mr Trump and Mr Vance cornered the war-time president. Public trust in Mr Zelensky is at 57 per cent according to a poll released in February by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
Nearly 63 per cent of Ukrainians approve of Mr Zelensky’s actions as a president, a recent survey by the Identity and Borders in Flux: The case of Ukraine (IBIF) project in partnership with the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) showed last month.
The poll was released shortly after Mr Trump falsely claimed that the Ukrainian leader’s approval ratings had dipped to four per cent.
Mr Zelensky was also defended by his political opponents back home after Mr Trump falsely called Mr Zelensky a “dictator” for legally postponing an election last year.
“We may have different opinions about Zelenskyy, but only Ukrainian citizens have the right to judge his support,” said Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a lawmaker from the opposition party Holos. “And to publicly criticise him too, because, in the end, he is our elected leader.”
Senior Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has also said that Russia might seek to interfere in an electoral process that would already face significant challenges.
This week Dept of Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick told CNN’s Pamela Brown that Mr Trump was “not weighing into Ukrainian politics” and doesn’t want Mr Zelensky to resign.
