Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “paying for mistakes he has made” and the Ukrainian people are wondering why the country was not better prepared, Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, has said in interviews with various news outlets.

Mr Klitschko said Ukrainians were losing trust in the wartime leader’s handling of the crisis. 

“People wonder why we weren’t better prepared for this war, why Zelenskyy denied until the end that it would come to this,” Mr Klitschko told the Swiss media outlet 20 Minuten. 

“People see who’s effective and who’s not. And there were and still are a lot of expectations. Zelenskyy is paying for mistakes he has made.”

Asked what mistakes Mr Zelenskyy had made, the mayor added: “People wonder why we weren’t better prepared for this war.

“Or why it was possible that the Russians were able to reach Kyiv so quickly.

“There was too much information that didn’t match reality. But still the president has an important function today and we must support him until the end of the war.

“But at the end of this war, every politician will pay for his successes or failures.”

The former boxing champion also claimed the Ukrainian leader had authoritarian tendencies.

He told the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, in a separate interview: “At some point we will no longer be any different from Russia, where everything depends on the whim of one man.”

The comments comes as Ukraine presses on with its counteroffensive which has made small gains but is not moving at the speed they had hoped.