“What do you have left now? The country is absolutely obliterated ... Millions and millions of people – including all of these great soldiers – they’re dead,” Trump said.

“Any deal – the worst deal – would’ve been better than what we have now.

“If they made a bad deal, it would’ve been much better. They would’ve given up a little bit, and everybody would be living, and every building would be built, and every tower would be ageing for another 2000 years.”

“What deal can we make? It’s demolished,” he added. “The people are dead. The country is in rubble.”

Weapons request

Zelensky is pitching to the White House what he calls a victory plan for the war, expected to include a request to use long-range Western weapons to strike targets inside Russia.

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The Biden administration said on Wednesday (US time) that the US would send Ukraine an undisclosed number of medium-range cluster bombs and an array of rockets, artillery and armoured vehicles in an aid package of some $US375 million ($549 million). A US official said billions more in assistance over the coming months would be announced on Thursday (US time).

While Ukraine outperformed many expectations that it would fall quickly to Russia, outnumbered Ukrainian forces face grinding battles against one of the world’s most powerful armies in the country’s east.

A deal with Russia would almost certainly be unfavourable for Ukraine, which has lost a fifth of its territory and tens of thousands of lives in the conflict.

Trump has laid the blame for the conflict on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival in November’s election. He said Biden had “egged it all on” by pledging to help Ukraine defend itself rather than pushing it to cede territory to Russia.

“Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen by feeding Zelensky money and munitions like no country has ever seen before,” Trump said.

Notably, Trump did not attack Putin’s reasoning for launching the invasion, only suggesting the Russian leader would not have started the war had Trump been in office. He did say of Putin, “He’s no angel.”

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has called on Zelensky to fire his country’s US ambassador after Republicans criticised the Ukrainian leader’s visit to a swing-state Pennsylvania site producing war munitions as a political stunt.

Johnson’s demand on Wednesday came as Zelensky addressed the UN in New York on the eve of his visit to Washington, where he plans to brief senators about the war effort before meeting Biden at the White House.

“The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Zelensky.

AP

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