Image source, Getty Images

Yesterday, US President Donald Trump posted a lengthy attack on Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

The White House quickly confirmed the tirade was in direct response to Zelensky saying that Trump lives in a “disinformation space”, which in turn, was in response to earlier claims from Trump about Zelensky's presidency and how the war began.

On his Truth Social platform, Trump called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator” and said he “refuses to have elections”.

"I love Ukraine, but Zelensky has done a terrible job, his country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died," he wrote.

He also said Russia and the US are “successfully negotiating an end” to the war in the meantime, while saying Europe has “failed to bring peace”.

For context: Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia invaded in February 2022, meaning elections are suspended

Nomia Iqbal
Reporting from Washington DC

Image source, Reuters

President Trump and President Zelensky's relationship has never been smooth.

A phone call on 25 July 2019 led to Trump's first impeachment. He was accused of breaking the law by pressuring Ukraine's leader in 2019 to dig up damaging information on his 2020 rival Joe Biden.

Asking foreign entities for help in winning the election was illegal, said Democrats, but Trump denied he did anything wrong. He was impeached in December of 2019 but cleared by the Senate.

But that phone call also led to a Justice Department referral to determine whether Trump's conduct was a violation of a campaign finance law.

Prosecutors declined to investigate but the transcript revealed that Trump had offered Zelensky support from the US Justice Department to investigate Biden.

Trump later defended it all as normal and fine, as did Zelensky.

The Ukrainian leader has been trying to tread a fine line as a different reality emerges for him under Trump.

Ukraine is doing everything it can to defend the country, amid a deepening rift between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the former Vice Prime Minister for European integration tells the BBC's Today programme.

"We are doing everything possible and impossible to get the message across to [the] American administration," Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze says.

She adds she hopes UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to the US next week will "hopefully be a successful attempt to reason [with] our American partners".

Her comments come hot on the heels of Trump calling Zelensky a "dictator" and suggesting to the BBC that Russia holds "the cards" in the peace negotiations - you can read more about that here.

Image source, PA Media

UK's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will travel to the US next week to meet with Trump about "a role for Europe" in ending the war in Ukraine, says Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.

She also calls for all sides to "take the heat down" in discussions over the future of Ukraine this morning.

Starmer and leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch stepped in to defend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday after Donald Trump labelled him a "dictator".

Nandy tells the BBC's Today programme that the UK does not place too much weight on what the US president has said.

"The important thing with President Trump is what he does," the culture secretary says.

"One of the things that President Trump has been very clear about is that he'd like to resolve this situation. We believe that the US is absolutely critical to that."

Image source, Reuters

The war of words began with comments made by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday at a news conference at Mar-A-Lago in Florida, when he blamed Ukraine for the war. "You should have never started it. You could have made a deal," he said.

Trump did not mention that Russian President Vladimir Putin took the decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, reacting to US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia from which Kyiv was excluded, told reporters in Kyiv: "We are seeing a lot of disinformation and it's coming from Russia. With all due respect to President Donald Trump as a leader... he is living in this disinformation space."

He added that he believed "the United States helped Putin to break out of years of isolation".

Later, Trump labelled Zelensky a “dictator” and said the leader has done a “terrible job”.

• Read more about how the two leaders got here, and what it means

Image source, AFP

Wednesday was another busy day on the global stage, as leaders continued to weigh in on the subject of ending the war in Ukraine. Here’s what happened:

• US President Donald Trump labelled Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky a “dictator” in comments in Florida, hours after saying the same in a post on Truth Social
• He was responding to comments made earlier by Zelensky, who said Trump is living in a “disinformation space” created by Russia
• The UK’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told Zelensky in a phone call on Wednesday evening that he supports Zelensky as leader, calling it “perfectly reasonable” to suspend elections in a war
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was prepared to meet Trump, and said an “increase” of trust is needed between the two countries
• He added that “nobody is excluding Ukraine” from negotiations to end the war, after the US and Russia held talks about the war in Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, without any Ukrainian representation
• On the ground, Ukrainian residents told the BBC that Trump is a “bully” and his comments are “painful to hear”
• Fighting continued in the background. One person was killed in an attack on Russia’s border region of Belgorod, according to the regional governor, and in Ukraine, two were killed and two injured in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s Donetsk

If you'd like to look back on the play-by-play yesterday, you can do so on our previous live page

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of discussions around ending the war in Ukraine.

The future is “with peace”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last night in his evening address.

It’s a topic that’ll be on the world stage again today. We expect Zelensky to meet with Donald Trump's Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg later. Kellogg was in Ukraine yesterday to meet with other officials.

US President Donald Trump and Zelensky had a war of words yesterday, adding more tension to their relationship.

Trump called Zelensky a dictator, a comment that was widely condemned by European leaders. The US president later told the BBC Russia "has the cards" in the peace negotiations because they have taken "a lot of territory".

Meanwhile, the US-Russia relationship appears to be somewhat thawing - Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would be prepared to meet with Trump, as the country continues to discuss a way to end the conflict.

Several European leaders have weighed in on potential peace talks, calling for Ukraine to have a seat at the table for any discussion of the end of the war.

We are expect plenty more to develop both politically and on the frontlines, so stay with us.