There’s no love being lost between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump, who, in his latest social media post, eviscerated the European leader for acting like a “dictator” in the run-up to peace negotiations.

The Ukrainian president “may not have a country left” unless he changes course, Trump warned in a new Truth Social post. Zelenskyy “played Biden like a fiddle,” he wrote, suggesting those days are long gone.

“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle.”

A theme throughout Trump’s tirade is his disbelief that the United States spent $200 billion to assist Europe with protecting Ukraine from further Russian encroachments but “got nothing back.”

Trump said: “On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’ He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’”

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy is behaving like a “dictator,” suspending the country’s elections while he continues to manage the war effort, Trump said.

He “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left,” Trump warned. “In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do.”

Discussions around ending the war have already begun, leaving Zelenskyy angry and embarrassed that he was not invited to join U.S. and Russian officials at the bargaining table. Neither were Europe’s other leaders, many of whom are scrambling to make inroads before Trump has an unfettered opportunity to carve up a portion of the continent on the border of NATO members.

He is also pushing Zelenskyy to acquiesce and hold the country’s election before a peace agreement can be formalized. He demurred when asked whether he agreed that Russia may install a puppet regime if elections proceed, something Vladimir Putin is pushing for as well.

“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine – I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4 per cent approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens,” Trump responded.

“You have leadership now that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States,” the president told reporters on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago. And although “I like him personally,” Trump said about Zelenskyy, “You should have ended it – three years, you should have never started it.”

Asked how he felt the talks, spearheaded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are proceeding, Trump said he is “much more confident” following Tuesday’s initial meeting between both camps. He added that the meeting involving Rubio, White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Vladimir Putin aide Yuri Ushakov was a “very good” one.

“Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism,” he claimed.

Putin said he looks forward to meeting one-on-one with President Trump but stated that ground rules for the meeting are still being set. Trump’s announcement came shortly before new drone attacks were launched on Kyiv.