Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ripped Vladimir Putin as a “murderer” following President Trump’s comparison of its war with Russia to two kids “fighting like crazy” on a playground.
“We are not kids with Putin at the playground in the park,” Zelensky said in a clip from “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” released Friday.
“He is a murderer who came to this park to kill the kids.”
The Ukrainian leader’s blistering remarks came in response to co-anchor Martha Raddatz asking whether Trump truly grasps the ongoing devastation and suffering his country has endured over the past three years since Russia’s invasion.
Trump, who declared on the campaign trail that he would immediately bring peace between the two warring nations on Day 1, likened the world leaders as children fighting on a playground and suggested more time may be needed before “pulling them apart.”
“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy. They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled,” Trump told reporters Thursday while hosting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office.
“Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart. And I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday. I said, ‘President, maybe you have to keep fighting and suffering a lot’ because both sides are suffering, before you pull them apart before they’re able to be pulled apart.”
The commander in chief was referring to a Wednesday phone call he had with Putin, after which he acknowledged was “not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace” between the combatant nations.
The Kremlin chief informed Trump of plans for further strikes on Ukraine after a covert operation sabotaged warplanes and infrastructure deep inside Russia this past week.
The Republican said the attack on Kyiv won’t “be pretty.”
In the sneak preview, Zelensky described the “nightmare” and “limitless” agony of one Ukrainian father who wakes up each day knowing that his wife and three children — who were killed in a missile strike — are still gone.
He said Trump, who has vilified Zelensky as a “dictator,” “could not feel fully and understand this pain.”
“And it’s not about President Trump, it’s about any person who is not here in the country, who is some thousands of miles away,” Zelensky pressed, citing the 631 Ukrainian children who have died since the war erupted three years ago.
“[They] cannot feel fully and understand this pain.”
Zelensky’s full ABC News interview will air Sunday.
