In an election rally speech in the town of Charlotte that will add significant weight to accusations that he is biased against Ukraine, Trump also lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of refusing to negotiate a deal with Russia to end the war and questioning his integrity.

Trump has claimed frequently that he could end the Ukraine-Russia war immediately if he was re-elected.

“Those buildings are down, the cities are gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal,” said Trump, adding “any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now.”

“You have a country that has been obliterated,” he continued. “Not possible to rebuild. It could take hundreds of years to rebuild it. There’s not enough money to rebuild it, even if the whole world got together.”

Despite Trump’s claim that Ukraine had been destroyed, only about 20% of the country is now under Russian occupation, and most of it remains relatively untouched physically by the war.

The former president’s sharp criticism of Zelenskyy came after the Ukrainian leader questioned the Republican candidate’s ability to broker a peace deal. In an interview with The New Yorker on Sunday, Zelenskyy said: “My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war, even if he might think he knows how.”

Later, during his address at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Zelesnkyy also took an indirect jab at Trump’s unclear peace strategy, saying that any deviations from his “Peace Formula,” are “efforts to achieve a lull instead of an end to the war.”