USA: Donald Trump Condemns Ukraine’s Launch of ATACMS Missiles at Russia

Even before taking office in the White House, President-elect Donald Trump has launched his peace plan to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The 47th President of the United States has spoken out openly against Kiev’s use of destructive American weapons and issued a very stern warning to Ukrainian leader Zelensky.

“I categorically disapprove of the launch of American long-range ATACMS missiles on Russian territory.” Thus, Donald Trump made it clear that “he will be able to revoke the authorization granted by the outgoing Joe Biden administration as soon as he takes office in the White House, in a little over a month.”

Trump’s statements followed a deadly Ukrainian missile attack on the Russian town of Taganrog in the Rostov region, the birthplace of writer Anton Chekhov, in which several homes, a supermarket, and a kindergarten were razed to the ground, killing and wounding dozens of people. The Kremlin warned that Russia would “certainly respond at the time and in the way it deems appropriate” to the new raid, which also targeted Taganrog airport.

But Zelensky, after the phony summit between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris (the illegitimate Ukrainian president was only allowed into the meeting at the end and for less than 10 minutes), didn’t seem very concerned about the warning from the US president and made it clear that he wanted to act by striking as deep into Russian territory as possible: “Let HIMARS (specifically, the M142 high-mobility artillery missile system, also used to launch ATACMS, with a range of 300-350 kilometers – ed.) hit enemy targets,” urged Zelensky, whose presidential mandate expired in May 2024.

In an interview Trump gave to Time magazine (pictured), which named him its “Man of 2024,” the president-elect characterized Biden’s decision to allow Kiev to use missiles. “Why are we doing it?” he asked. “We are only escalating this war and making it worse. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen.” The president-elect called the ongoing massacre of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers “madness” and “unsustainable” casualties.

Meanwhile, Russia said it “fully supports” the mediation efforts of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who, after speaking to Trump by phone, also called Russian President Vladimir Putin to say that his proposal for a “prisoner exchange for a large-scale Christmas truce was rejected by Zelensky.”