{"id":1591,"date":"2025-03-26T03:19:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T03:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/?p=1591"},"modified":"2025-03-25T03:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T03:21:11","slug":"zelensky-claims-russia-has-influenced-us-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/?p=1591","title":{"rendered":"Zelensky claims Russia has \u2018influenced\u2019 US officials"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Richard Sanders<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Russia may have influenced members of the US administration&nbsp;<em>\u201cthrough information,\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;Ukraine\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed in an interview with Time magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His comments come as US President Donald Trump has acknowledged some of Moscow\u2019s concerns regarding the root causes of the crisis. These include the Kremlin\u2019s repeated criticisms of NATO\u2019s continued expansion towards Russia\u2019s borders and its opposition to having Ukraine become a member of the bloc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Commenting on recent Russia-US contacts, particularly the phone calls between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky lamented that the White House was being receptive to information coming out of Moscow. During the latest call, Putin told Trump that Ukraine\u2019s incursion forces had been surrounded in Russia\u2019s Kursk Region but Zelensky has denied this claim.<br><em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cI believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information,\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;Zelensky told the magazine.&nbsp;<em>\u201cTheir signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Time correspondent Simon Shuster, during the interview Zelensky showed him three paintings hanging in&nbsp;<em>\u201ca small room behind his office\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;in Kiev. One, described as his favorite, depicts the Kremlin engulfed in flames. He said that each of the pictures is&nbsp;<em>\u201cabout victory.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the escalation of hostilities in 2022, Russia has repeatedly emphasized that it remains open to negotiating a peaceful resolution of the conflict and has accused Kiev of refusing to talk and attempting to prolong the fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In February, during a meeting in the Oval Office, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance also publicly blasted Zelensky over his refusal to negotiate with Russia. Following that meeting, the US administration announced a temporary suspension of military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>US aid to Kiev was resumed after Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire proposal. Last week, after Putin\u2019s phone call with Trump, Moscow rejected a full truce but approved a month-long pause on energy infrastructure strikes. Zelensky later agreed to the measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since then, however, Russian officials have repeatedly accused Kiev of violating the truce by carrying out drone strikes on key energy infrastructure facilities on Russian territory. Moscow has maintained that Ukraine\u2019s actions, including its attacks on civilian infrastructure, justify the characterization of the government in Kiev as a terrorist regime and indicate it doesn\u2019t want peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Sanders Russia may have influenced members of the US administration&nbsp;\u201cthrough information,\u201d&nbsp;Ukraine\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed in an interview with Time magazine. His comments come as US President Donald Trump has acknowledged some of Moscow\u2019s concerns regarding the root causes of the crisis. These include the Kremlin\u2019s repeated criticisms of NATO\u2019s continued expansion towards Russia\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1592,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions\/1592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}