Donald Trump has claimed that ‘millions are dead’ in Ukraine ‘because of three people’.

The US President has yet again pointed the finger at Volodymyr Zelenskyy following their heated confrontation in the Oval Office back in February.

During the interaction, Trump, alongside Vice President JD Vance, accused the Ukrainian President of ‘gambling with world war three’ without support from the US.

In his Washington office yesterday (14 April), Trump was in a meeting with El Salvador’s leader when he told reporters that Zelenskyy was not ‘competent’.

Also taking a swipe at former POTUS Joe Biden, who was in office when the war first began, he said: “If Biden were competent, and if Zelenskyy were competent, and I don’t know that he is. There was no way that war should never have been allowed to happen.”

But he wasn’t finished there, as he then took aim at Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, adding: “Biden could have stopped it, and Zelenskyy could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it.”

When asked about Zelenskyy, Trump said: “When you start a war you’ve got to know you can win the war. You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size.

“And then hope that people give you some missiles.”

“Millions of people are dead because of three people,” he continued.

Donald Trump has blamed the war in Ukraine on ‘three people’, including Vladimir Putin (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

“Let’s say Putin number one, let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelenskyy. And all I can do is try and stop it – that’s all I want to do. I want to stop the killing.

“And I think we’re doing well in that regard. I think you’ll have some very good proposals very soon.”

In a 60 Minutes interview, Zelenskyy hit back at Trump, insisting that he doesn’t ‘want to engage in the altered reality that is being presented to me’.

“First and foremost, we did not launch an attack. It seems to me that the vice president is somehow justifying Putin’s actions,” Zelenskyy said of JD Vance.

Opening up about his ‘hatred’ towards Putin, he said: “Putin? 100 percent hatred. Not even 99.9 percent.”

Trump told reporters that Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not ‘competent’ (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

“Though this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to end the war as soon as possible and transition to diplomacy. But how else can you see a person who came here and murdered our people, murdered children?

“We’re inside a school bomb shelter right now. The bomb shelter of a school. The bomb shelter classrooms beneath the city of Kryvyi Rih were silent.”

Zelenskyy further told CBS’ Scott Pelley during the interview that this is the reason why ‘we can’t trust Russia’.

“Our people have paid the highest price possible. There is no higher price. We have given all our money–all we have in terms of finances. But most important, we gave [the lives of] our people,” he said.

China has hit back at the US, after tariffs of 104 percent on Chinese exports came into effect on Wednesday (9 April) – and some items are about to become a whole lot more expensive.

What are tariffs?

Just for a quick refresher, a tariff is a kind of tax an importer pays on things brought in from other countries. For example, if someone in the US wanted to buy something from the UK, then they’d have to pay money the US government 10 percent of the item’s value (unless it’s a car, in which case it’s 25 percent).

That money is going to be paid by the person in the US, but tariffs hurt other countries too, as the person importing them will likely increase the price to cover their own costs and pass the expense onto the person who ultimately ends up buying it.

Essentially, the tariffs mean that imported goods in the US will now be more expensive, which is a great way to boost purchases of domestic products, but frustrating for the average American looking to buy groceries and daily essentials.

The stock market has dipped following Donald Trump’s decision on tariffs (Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images)

How will US tariffs impact China?

Donald Trump said his tariffs were designed to close trade deficits with foreign countries, when it comes to physical goods, during his ‘Liberation Day’ announcement on 2 April.

However, the Chinese commerce ministry argued the US’s ‘increase in tariffs will not solve its own problems’.

“Instead, it will trigger sharp fluctuations in financial markets, push up US inflation pressure, weaken the US industrial base and increase the risk of a US economic recession, which will ultimately only backfire on itself,” they said.

As a result, China has now raised tariffs to 84 percent on goods coming from the US.

“If the US insists on further escalating its economic and trade restrictions, China has the firm will and abundant means to take necessary countermeasures and fight to the end,” the ministry of commerce added.

Top 10 items traded between US and China

According to the US International Trade Commission, here are the top 10 traded items between the US and China:

US exports to China

• Soybeans – 9%

• Aircraft and engines – 8%

• Integrated circuits – 4%

• Pharmaceuticals – 4%

• Petroleum – 3%

On 2 April, Trump made the trade announcement at the White House, calling it ‘Liberation Day’ (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

China exports to US

• Smartphones – 9%

• Laptops – 7%

• Batteries – 3%

• Toys – 2%

• Telecoms equipment – 2%

Earlier this week, President Trump said that the raise in tariffs was benefitting the US, calling China ‘the biggest abuser of them all’.

“Oil prices are down, interest rates are down (the slow moving Fed should cut rates!), food prices are down, there is NO INFLATION, and the long time abused USA is bringing in Billions of Dollars a week from the abusing countries on Tariffs that are already in place,” he wrote on X on Monday (7 April).

“This is despite the fact that the biggest abuser of them all, China, whose markets are crashing, just raised its Tariffs by 34%, on top of its long term ridiculously high Tariffs (Plus!), not acknowledging my warning for abusing countries not to retaliate.”

Well in 2024, the trade in goods between the two power houses raised an eye-watering $585bn (£429bn).

But it seems the US imported a lot more from China ($440bn) compared with how much their opposition imported from America ($145bn).

“They’ve made enough, for decades, taking advantage of the Good OL’ USA! Our past “leaders” are to blame for allowing this, and so much else, to happen to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump added.

Additional words by Joe Harker

Russia ‘cannot accept’ the peace deal which has been proposed by President Donald Trump to put a stop to the invasion of Ukraine, a top diplomat has said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said although the nation has taken the ideas put forward by the US ‘very seriously’, the Kremlin still aren’t satisfied with the current terms of the suggested armistice agreement.

He complained that the US aren’t taking Vladimir Putin‘s ‘main demand’ into consideration – which is believed to be his desire to take control of Ukraine – and this is also one of the ‘root causes of the conflict’.

While speaking to Russia’s International Affairs magazine, Ryabkov laid out further demands which come on top of a number of controversial requests already made by Russia.

“We have not heard from Trump a signal to Kyiv to end the war,” he told the publication, as per NewsWeek. “All that we have today is an attempt to find a certain scheme that would first allow us to achieve a ceasefire, as it is conceived by the Americans.

Russia ‘cannot accept’ the peace deal as it stands, Sergei Ryabkov said (Contributor/Getty Images)

“And then move on to some other models and schemes, in which, as far as we can judge, today there is no place for our main demand, namely, the solution of problems related to the root causes of this conflict.”

Ryabkov continued: “This is completely absent, and it must be overcome.

“We take the models and solutions proposed by the Americans very seriously, but we cannot accept all this as it is.

“We certainly have a deeply and carefully thought-out set of our own priorities and approaches to this topic, which is being worked out and worked out, including by our negotiating team at the recent talks with the Americans in Riyadh.”

It comes just days after Trump admitted he was ‘very angry’ with Putin due to the comments the Russian leader has made.

Although the pair have generally seemed rather close on the world stage and they’ve ‘always had a good relationship‘, the US President admitted things are a bit fraught between them at the moment.

He’s trying to finally put an end to the war in Ukraine and Putin isn’t exactly making the job easy for him.

Trump is keen to thrash out an armistice agreement between Zelenskyy’s and Putin’s countries (Chen Mengtong/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)

In an interview with NBC, Trump revealed he was not happy with recent comments made by Putin calling for a transitional government to be put in place in Ukraine in order to hold elections in the country he is invading.

That would essentially kick out current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Ukraine’s constitution makes it clear that elections are suspended during wartime anyway.

Ceasefire talks have been progressing and an agreement has been reached over a ceasefire in the Black Sea, but Russia’s list of conditions for a full ceasefire threaten to stall an agreement being made.

As such, Trump’s attempts to broker a ceasefire have become bogged down and in his interview he said he didn’t like Putin’s recent comments.

Trump said: “If I feel we’re in the midst of a negotiation, you could say that I was very angry, p***ed off, when Putin said yesterday that – you know, when Putin started getting into Zelenskyy’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right direction.”

He went on to say that if Russia didn’t agree to a ceasefire, then he would put more tariffs on the country’s oil exports.

When asked about the current tension between Putin and Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov yesterday (31 March) described the efforts to hammer out a peace deal with Ukraine as a ‘drawn-out process’.

He told reporters: “We are working to implement some ideas in connection with the Ukrainian settlement. This work is ongoing. There is nothing concrete yet that we could and should announce.

“This is a drawn-out process because of the difficulty of its substance.”

You can say that again, Peskov.

China has issued a defiant statement to US president Donald Trump as the ongoing trade war between the two nations heats up.

It would appear the both the Chinese and American governments have found themselves locked in an escalating battle to one-up each other in a trade battle which is playing out in front of the entire world.

As things currently stand, the US has slapped a charge of 145 percent on Chinese imports, while China responded earlier today by upping their tariffs on American goods to 125 percent.

The latest escalations have come at the same time as President Trump‘s decision to issue a 90-day pause on tariffs for all other nations, after global stock markets sank into the gutter.

And that’s where we’re at, for now.

The US-China trade war is heating up (Getty Stock Images)

Where this whole tit-for-tat saga will end is anybody’s guess but, judging by the latest statements coming from Chinese officials, it would seem the East Asian nation has no plans in bowing down to Trump’s demands.

An excerpt from a letter written for the South China Morning Post by Huang Jingrui, spokesperson for the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong referred to Trump as a ‘tariff-wielding barbarian’.

“We must solemnly tell the US: a tariff-wielding barbarian who attempts to force countries to call and beg for mercy can never expect that call from China,” he wrote.

“If the US is truly sincere about starting a dialogue with China on tariff issues, it should immediately correct its wrong practices and adopt the right attitude of equality, respect and mutual benefit.”

As China raises its US tariffs to 125%, the world waits to see what Donald Trump’s next move will be (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

His comments echo that of the Chinese Commerce Ministry, who gave the following statement on Friday: “The successive imposition of excessively high tariffs on China by the US has become nothing more than a numbers game, with no real economic significance.”

Meanwhile Chinese President Xi Jinping has broken his silence for the first time on the matter, stating there are ‘no winners’ in a trade war.

“There are no winners in a trade war, and going against the world will only lead to self-isolation,” he told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday (via CNN).

Meanwhile Chinese President Xi Jinping has spoken out about the ongoing trade war (Ken Ishii – Pool/Getty Images)

According to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, President Xi added: “For over 70 years, China’s development has relied on self-reliance and hard work — never on handouts from others, and it is not afraid of any unjust suppression.

“Regardless of how the external environment changes, China will remain confident, stay focused, and concentrate on managing its own affairs well.”

According to the BBC, America imports around around $440 billion of goods from China, which accounts for 13 percent of US imports alone.