Ukrainian scandal in Washington: GOP takes aim at Zelensky

The Biden-Harris administration on Sunday flew Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Pennsylvania on a US Air Force plane for a visit to a munitions factory in the state events.
Photo: Commonwealth Media Services

Republicans are hammering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after he criticized Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in an interview and visited a Pennsylvania ammunition factory over the weekend with the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, writes ‘The Hill’.

Zelensky is in the U.S. for the United Nations’s General Assembly this week. The GOP argued Sunday’s Pennsylvania stop amounted to Zelensky campaigning for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Harris and Democrats while using American taxpayer dollars. Zelensky was flown to Pennsylvania in an Air Force C-17 plane.

“Zelensky is openly campaigning for Democrats in battleground Pennsylvania today some 50 days out from our Presidential election. Unreal,” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt (Mo.) wrote in a post on the social platform.

Sean Parnell, a backer of former President Trump and onetime Senate candidate, said at a Trump-Vance campaign rally that Zelensky was in Pennsylvania “signing bombs with Gov. Shapiro.”

“Zelensky is also attacking JD Vance in the biggest, most important battleground state in the country during an election year. If that isn’t foreign election interference I don’t know what is,” Parnell said.

Zelensky struck a more cautious tone toward Trump, saying he has had good conversations on the phone with the GOP presidential candidate. But Zelensky raised doubts about Trump’s plans to end the war by the time he takes office in January.

“My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war, even if he might think he knows how,” he said.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., wrote in a post on X that Zelensky’s comments were “disgraceful.”

“So a foreign leader who has received billions of dollars in funding from American taxpayers, comes to our country and has the nerve to attack the GOP ticket for President?” he posted Monday.

While Zelensky has not been immune from GOP barbs, the latest Republican attacks on Zelensky are among the loudest yet. 

…House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-CA) has demanded that Zelensky immediately fire the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States. Johnson accuses the Kyiv authorities of interfering in the US elections on the side of the Democrats:

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