TRUMP SAYS UKRAINE NEEDS NEW LEADER AS PEACE TALKS CONTINUE
US President Donald Trump said Ukraine should replace President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying Kyiv needed "a new leader who can make a deal" after criticising Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries. Speaking at the White House, Trump said Ukraine had "lost 30 percent" of its territory and suffered over 2 million deaths under Zelenskyy's leadership, calling the war "a war that should have never started" and blaming its outbreak on "incompetence". Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga responded on social media platform X, saying Zelenskyy "has the support of the Ukrainian people, and they have the right to decide," and that criticism from abroad "only confirm that he is doing his job well". The remarks came as US, Ukrainian and European officials held talks in Miami aimed at reaching a joint proposal to end the war.
Trump's comments followed his announcement of a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin for Russia to supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel to US and global markets immediately, with a further 500,000 tonnes to follow in November. Trump has attributed high US diesel prices to Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, though the war between the US and Israel against Iran has been identified as a principal driver of global energy price rises. US envoy Steve Witkoff said talks in Miami, which included the E3 nations, the European Commission, Ukraine and NATO, covered energy resilience, grain exports, security guarantees and arrangements "to prevent future conflict". He described the discussions as "constructive" and said they also addressed Ukraine's post-war reconstruction and prospects for EU accession.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that the conflict had reached what he described as a potentially dangerous impasse, warning that failure to reach a settlement raised the risk of further escalation that could spread to neighbouring NATO countries. "We do not believe that there is a military solution to this conflict," Rubio told reporters in Lisbon. Witkoff did not confirm whether the parties involved in the Miami talks would meet again on Saturday as originally planned. Trump also said that had he been US president in 2022, the war "would have never started".