Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York speculated that President Donald Trump’s recent jabs at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are meant to “irritate.”

Ukraine is approaching its third-year anniversary of the Russian invasion. While Zelensky has maintained control of its capital Kyiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims to have annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson regions in the south and east of Ukraine since September 2022. York reacted to Trump’s recent criticisms of Zelensky, which included blaming the Ukrainian president for the war.

“Look, the fact is: Russia invaded Ukraine. That’s just the fact here. Why is the president saying otherwise? My feeling is it is part of his plan. I don’t know what he intends to do,” York said on Fox News’s Special Report With Bret Baier. “This is the kind of thing that Trump does to irritate some parties while he is appealing to others.”

According to Trump, Zelensky “could have made a deal” during these last three years. Trump went on to suggest that Zelensky “should have never started” the conflict.

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This comes after then-President Joe Biden assured Ukraine another $425 million in aid in October, bringing the total given by the U.S. to $59 billion. Since then, the Department of Government Efficiency revealed that some of this aid, provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development, was spent by sending Ukrainians to Paris Fashion Week.

Russian casualties approach 1 million dead, while Trump has suggested 700,000 Ukrainian troops are also dead. However, Zelensky claims the Ukrainian death toll is 43,000.