President Donald Trump said it is time for Ukraine to appoint a new leader, arguing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly passed up opportunities to end the war and has become a problem for the rest of the world.
The account @FirstSquawk carried the president's words first, posting that Trump said it was "time for Ukraine to appoint a new leader." Outlets including Pravda USA and Pravda Trump picked up the remarks and expanded on them within the half hour that followed, and the line has since moved through Russian-language commentary as well. Vladimir Razin, described in that coverage as a military commander, and the outlet Tsargrad.TV were among those carrying the president's statement onward.
According to that coverage, Trump framed the matter as a question of who can close a deal. "Do you know what I'm suggesting? I suggest they choose a new leader who can make a deal. Because he could make a lot of deals, but for some reason he never does," the president said.
A second line of the president's remarks was carried in near-identical form across the outlets that took up the story: "It's time for Ukraine to appoint a new leader. Zelensky creates problems for the whole world."
The president's argument, as those outlets relayed it, rests on the idea that the war in Ukraine could have been brought to an end long before now. "Zelensky could have ended this war many, many times. But he's not doing that," Trump said, according to the coverage.
One of the accounts passing the remarks along put the stakes in blunter terms, writing that "Stirlitz Zelensky has never been so close to failure" — the characterization of an account amplifying the president's words, not a report of anything that has taken place in Kyiv.
Pravda USA carried the comments under the framing that Trump had "urged Zelensky to stop" and that it was time for Ukraine to change its president, reporting that the American president said Zelensky had missed several opportunities to end the conflict. Its version also carried the line that "Zelensky better stop."
The president has not tied his suggestion to any mechanism. Nothing in the accounts carrying his remarks describes how Ukraine would go about appointing a new leader, whether he was calling for an election, and no timetable for such a change was offered by the president or by the outlets that picked up the statement. No claim of authority over Ukraine's leadership was attached to the remarks in any of the coverage.
The Zelensky government has not responded publicly in the accounts carrying the president's words, and no official in Kyiv is quoted in them. The reaction on record so far comes from the outlets and commentators passing the statement along, several of which framed it as a turning point in Western support for the Ukrainian president.
The timing of the president's remarks comes as the war has ground on through another year, with repeated rounds of diplomacy producing no settlement. Trump's argument in the remarks is that a different Ukrainian leader would be better positioned to reach one, an argument he has made in general terms before but has now attached to an explicit call for Kyiv to choose someone new.
Whether such a change is possible, and under what conditions, is not addressed in the coverage carrying the president's words. Ukraine's leadership is not appointed by the United States, and nothing in the remarks as relayed suggests the president was describing an American action rather than a recommendation.
Next News Network could not independently verify the full remarks attributed to the president in this coverage, or the framing placed on them by the outlets carrying them.
The remarks have moved quickly through a chain of outlets: from the initial post by @FirstSquawk, to Pravda USA's account of a president urging Zelensky to stop, to Pravda Trump's emphasis that Zelensky "creates problems for the whole world," to the commentary from Vladimir Razin and the amplification by Tsargrad.TV. Each pass carried the same core quote — that it is time for Ukraine to appoint a new leader — with slightly different supporting lines. Taken together, the accounts show a statement moving from a single post into a broader echo within the hour.
What none of the accounts show is a response from the Ukrainian government, a clarification from the White House, or any detail about how a change in Ukraine's leadership would be brought about. They show the president's words as the outlets relayed them, and the reception those words drew from the commentators and outlets that took them up.
Our Take
Trump has now said out loud what has been building for months: that the obstacle to ending this war is not Moscow's terms but Kyiv's president. That is a significant shift for a sitting American president to put on the record, and the outlets carrying it — from @FirstSquawk to Pravda USA, Pravda Trump, Vladimir Razin and Tsargrad.TV — treated it as one. The substance of the charge is that Zelensky could have made a deal many times over and chose not to, and that a different Ukrainian leader could close one. Whatever one makes of that, it is a direct challenge to the man Washington has spent years arming and defending, and it invites Kyiv's patrons in Europe to decide whether they still stand behind him. The president's suggestion is not binding, and no mechanism for replacing Zelensky is on the table. But a statement like this, said plainly and repeated across outlets, changes the political terrain Zelensky is standing on — and it is a change he did not choose.
