President Donald Trump sent shockwaves through Europe, Russia, and especially Ukraine Tuesday night when he seemed to take Russia’s side in its war with Ukraine.
The president falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war and amplified misinformation about European and American support for that nation’s war effort. As the fighting rages on, as Russia continues to bomb civilian targets, a delegation from the United States, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, met with Russia’s foreign minister and other officials in Saudi Arabia to negotiate an end to the war. They did not invite Ukraine.
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WATCH HERETo add insult to injury, Trump did not acknowledge that Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor as he spoke at a news conference, solely blaming Ukraine.
"And I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years, you should have never started it, you could have made a deal,” Trump said.
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“It make me so angry, it, like, I don’t even have words,” said Marianna Watermann, a Ukraine activist.
“A lot of anger, a lot of outrage,” added Darya Robinson.
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Robinson and Watermann are part of a group called Florida For Ukraine, a nonprofit that raises money for Ukrainian refugees and for the country’s war effort.
Watermann is from Russia, but when Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, she burned her Russian passport in protest at a demonstration in Miami.
“It was like shock for me when you see the cities are bombing, the people are screaming,” Watermann said.
Now she’s an American citizen and she says Moscow is delighted that an American president is siding with Russia over a European democracy.
“Yeah, they are so happy because he’s repeating exactly what Putin was saying for the last ten years,” Watermann said.
“But he definitely sending a wrong message that it’s OK,” Robinson added.
Trump doubled down in a Truth Social post Wednesday, accusing the democratically-elected Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, not Putin, of being “a dictator without elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.”
“It’s a very pro-Russian narrative,” Robinson said.
She thinks dictators will get the message that aggression will be tolerated or rewarded by the United States, even after thousands of civilians have been killed.
“You cannot close your eyes and pretend that didn’t happen,” Robinson said.
Meanwhile, Watermann said she will keep donating money to the Ukrainian cause, and she keeps receiving “thank you” videos. One of them shows a group of soldiers in uniform, and one of them starts the message in English, saying, “Hello Marianna, thank you for your support.”
Three of the soldiers in the video have now been killed in action.
The human cost of Russia’s invasion should not be forgotten. That’s one of the main points of the activists we spoke to today, that the atrocities are still happening in Ukraine. Robinson and Watermann say if Putin really wants peace, all he has to do is withdraw his army from Ukraine, and they wish Trump would put that option on the table.
