President Donald Trump is openly turning up the heat on Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, telling Newsmax in an interview published October 15 that "Zelensky is not a good guy for us to deal with." Trump claimed Zelensky says he wants to settle but doesn't really mean it, and said he finds him more difficult to negotiate with than Russian President Vladimir Putin. He suggested that if a settlement does happen, it likely won't be reached with Zelensky at the table, even as he insisted both sides actually want the war to end. The real roadblock, in his telling, is personal: Putin and Zelensky hate each other, and that kind of bitterness makes any deal extremely hard to land.

The outburst came right after Ukraine resumed strikes on Russian oil facilities, including a drone attack on a facility in Ryazan, just as Zelensky lifted restrictions on refinery strikes following continued Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Trump said he had told Kyiv to leave the refineries alone because the fallout is a global problem, and warned Zelensky to stop. That warning lands days after a US-Russia deal allowing Moscow to supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel to the US and global markets in exchange for sanctions relief, a move Zelensky said left him disappointed. Trump also renewed his push for elections in Ukraine and floated the idea that the country should get a new leader, raising fresh questions about where US-Ukraine relations and peace efforts go from here. Kyiv, for its part, has framed its refinery strikes as a response to Russia's ongoing attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.