President Donald Trump said he finds Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky more difficult to deal with than Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump, 80, commented in an interview with Newsmax on Thursday night, Oct. 15, 2026, the same day Zelensky tore up the “energy ceasefire” the U.S. president had declared on Truth Social. “No, I’m not a big fan of Zelensky. He destroyed that country,” the president said.
“Putin hates Zelensky, and Zelensky hates Putin,” Trump said. “It should end soon. I think they both would actually like to see it end. But I find Zelensky more difficult to deal with than Putin.”
A Three-Day Pause, Then Ryazan
Zelensky, 48, had held off on striking Russian energy sites for three days under pressure from Washington. In an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday, Oct. 15, he said the block on hitting refineries was over. “We’re done,” Zelensky said.
Ukrainian forces hit an oil refinery in Russia’s western Ryazan region hours later.
Zelensky also went after Trump personally over his dealings with authoritarian leaders. “He speaks about it openly and loudly that he loves such people and he respects such people,” he told the newspaper. Leaders who hold power for 20, 30 or 40 years strike Trump as very strong, Zelensky said.
The split is the worst between Washington and Kyiv since February 2025, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance dressed Zelensky down in the Oval Office and accused him of not being grateful enough for American support. Putin launched his full-scale invasion in 2022, and his forces have been bombing Ukraine for more than four and a half years.
MAGA Blames Zelensky for Gas Prices
Trump bought more than 1.8 million tons of Russian diesel in a scramble to bring down fuel costs driven by his own war on Iran. He called for Zelensky to resign as the deal drew global backlash. Voters rank the conflict and its effect on prices among their top concerns ahead of the Nov. 3 races for the House and Senate, where Democrats hold an overall 9-point lead.
Then came the refinery strikes, and Trump’s loyalists rounded on Kyiv. Right-wing social media personality Mike Cernovich wrote on X that taxpayers had handed Zelensky more than $250 billion, and that all Trump wanted was for diesel prices to fall a dollar or two before the midterms. Conservative commentator Rogan O’Handley, who posts as DC Draino, shared the post and urged Trump to retaliate. Former Trump adviser Steve Cortes asked on X how much American taxpayer money had gone to the Ukrainian leader.
Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX and X, posted on Wednesday, Oct. 14, that it was time for Zelensky to go. He was responding to a clip of Zelensky telling British journalist Piers Morgan that Ukraine was not for sale and that the war was about his country’s lives, homes and children.
The war with Iran has not drawn the same blame. It has wrecked fuel shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, where Iran-aligned Houthi rebels have blockaded the southern end of the Red Sea.
White House Orders Slowed Ukraine’s Starshield
White House officials told the Defense Department to slow Ukrainian access to SpaceX’s Starshield, the military-grade version of Musk’s Starlink service, according to two U.S. sources and a third Western official. It is not clear which official made that call or who passed it to the Pentagon.
Zelensky said the Trump administration had threatened to cut off intelligence sharing to force him to accept the ceasefire, and that his forces then lost early-warning systems for incoming missiles and saw their satellite coverage slow. Trump denied cutting off the intelligence supply. U.S. officials told the Ukrainians the alert failures were a glitch. Zelensky has disputed that account. Musk has said the network belongs to the U.S. government, and that limits on its speed and use are set by the U.S. military and ultimately the president.
After Trump announced the ceasefire, Putin’s forces bombed energy facilities in Kharkiv and Kyiv. Russian attacks killed at least 15 people in Ukraine by Thursday, Oct. 15, with three more dying in drone strikes on Friday, Oct. 16, that knocked out power for about 370,000 people. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that Starshield was working again, but only for drones moving slower than 100 mph.
Zelensky announced on Thursday that an overnight Ukrainian strike had destroyed four Russian warplanes and hit two more. He vowed to keep attacking targets inside Russia.