President Trump’s oldest son and informal envoy Donald Trump Jr. delivered sharp criticisms of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying Zelenskyy is out of the loop on the latest negotiation efforts.

Trump Jr. also told reporters that his father may walk away from supporting Ukraine if Kyiv refuses to engage with Moscow at the negotiating table.

President Trump has voiced his own frustrations loud and clear, just as Russia’s war with Ukraine remains deadlocked after roughly ten months of negotiation efforts.

‘I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelenskyy hasn’t yet read the proposal — that was as of a few hours ago,’ Trump said Sunday. ‘Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy’s fine with it. His people love it. But he isn’t ready.’

Trump did not specify which proposal he meant, though the most recent known plan was the updated peace framework drafted by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff after his trip to Moscow last week.

Speaking at the Doha Forum, a major gathering of government officials and international figures, Trump Jr. maintained that Ukraine has long been hindered by corruption among its officials and claimed that this fraud is helping fuel the war from both the Moscow and Kyiv sides.

Zelenskyy’s aide Andriy Yermak, a central figure in Ukraine’s negotiating team, recently resigned amid that corruption scandal.

Zelenskyy is in London on Monday for meetings with European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

‘Because of the war, and because he’s one of the great marketers of all times, Zelenskyy became a borderline deity, especially to the left, where he could do no wrong, he was beyond reproach,’ Trump Jr. said.

Addressing whether his father might ultimately walk away from the negotiations, Trump Jr. said, ‘What’s good about my father, and what’s unique about my father, is you don’t know what he’s going to do,’ adding, ‘The fact that he’s not predictable … forces everyone to actually deal in an intellectually honest capacity.’

The president and his team have been pressing both Kyiv and Moscow to reach a peace agreement with renewed force this past month, but the push has yet to yield results.

Progress with Putin has also been limited.

Though Trump’s critics accuse the administration of leaning toward Moscow, Putin himself has not endorsed the White House plan and recently said certain elements of Trump’s proposal were ‘unworkable.’

Trump has repeatedly argued that Ukraine will ultimately need to cede territory to Russia to end the conflict. 

Zelenskyy said Saturday that he had been briefed over the phone by Ukrainian and US officials on the latest discussions, calling it a ‘substantive phone call.’

‘Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,’ Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

The White House document released Friday stated that the United States aims to rebuild its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow’s isolation on the world stage, and that bringing the war to an end is central to US interests in order to ‘re-establish strategic stability with Russia.’

Putin welcomed this development. 

On Capitol Hill, Ukraine received a rare boost of their own: lawmakers introduced a new version of the NDAA that would raise the Pentagon’s budget by $8 billion, restrict future troop reductions in Europe and South Korea, and provide $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine. 

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