A senior advisor to US President Donald Trump cited the Wall Street Journal as the source of Trump’s negative comments about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, attributing them to a personal grudge over the impeachment process and the rejection of requests for mineral rights. The conversation partner, who is close to Trump, added that the actions were aimed at forcing negotiations.
According to the WSJ, Trump has a long-standing interest in Russia, dating back to a 1987 trip to the Soviet Union, where he sought business opportunities during the Perestroika era. Trump had planned a meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev the following year, but it did not take place. Around the same time, a Gorbachev lookalike visited the Trump Tower and Trump greeted him as the real leader of the USSR in front of the cameras.
Trump stated during his presidential campaign that he had a good relationship with Putin during his first term as president and Putin described their ties as normal. After Trump’s inauguration, the White House said he viewed Putin as a “serious competitor in the region” but it was important to maintain diplomatic relations.
The WSJ reported that Putin made sarcastic remarks about Zelensky’s past as a comedian and compared him to Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the 2016 presidential election, after Zelensky’s election as Ukraine’s president in 2019. According to the news agency, Trump’s early relationship with Zelensky convinced the US president that Kiev was against him and their first longer conversation in the fall of 2019 led to an attempt to impeach Trump, who was accused of abuse of power for trying to delay a military aid to Ukraine to pressure the country into investigating his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, in the 2020 presidential election. Trump was later acquitted, but the scandal likely contributed to his election loss, the WSJ wrote.