AAAAAnd It's Gone
President Trump's Meeting With Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Implodes
How quickly things can turn.
This morning, the apparent trajectory of the day was that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was going to appear at the White House for the formal signing of the framework deal negotiated between Trump’s team and Zelenskyy’s for the US to have exclusive rights to help Ukraine develop its mineral wealth.
Instead, Zelenskyy was booted out and told not to come back until he’s ready for peace.
What happened? Apparently, Zelenskyy happened. As the song goes, “then you opened up your mouth/And that is when it started going south”.
Despite having communicated via the media a readiness to sign the minerals deal, Zelenskyy chose the pre-signing presser to have an emotional moment, serving up some sharp criticisms of US and EU policy regarding Ukraine and Russia.
Responding to talk about the importance of diplomacy, President Zelensky appeared to dismiss the utility of American influence altogether, saying under President Obama, the Trump first term, and Biden the U.S. had achieved nothing through talk. This caustic statement, finishing with a rhetorical “What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about? What do you mean?” led Vice President Vance to retort, with evident distaste: “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going end the destruction of your country.”
Vance was having none of it, and pushed back on Zelenskyy. Hard.
Mr President with respect I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media, right now you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the President for trying to bring an end to this conflict.
It is certainly possible to disagree with the premise of the minerals deal itself. It is even reasonable that Zelenskyy might believe the minerals deal itself is the Trump Administration attempting to exploit Ukraine’s dire circumstances to get privileged access to Ukraine’s mineral resources.
However, having already agreed to the deal, Zelenskyy chose the worst possible moment to come unglued over having to make such a deal.
In the end, not only did Zelenskyy not come away with a signed deal, Zelenskyy did not come away with the United States firmly in Ukraine’s corner. Zelenskyy’s temper tantrum has completely roiled relations between the US and Ukraine. One does not have to have a PhD in international relations to realize this does not bode well for Ukaine.
Give Peace A Chance
For his part, Donald Trump made his position on Ukraine quite clear in an announcement posted a short time after Zelenskyy left the White House on TruthSocial:
In the spirit of full disclosure, I agree with Donald Trump on this objective. The proper outcome here is peace. Both sides need to stop killing each other and start negotiating with each other.
As I indicated in my last article outlining my immediate takeaways from the deal, the minerals deal made a point of excluding at least Russia from any future participation in tapping Ukraine’s mineral wealth.
The text of the agreement does not mention Russia or Russian President Vladimir Putin directly, but there is very little doubt that a primary objective of the agreement is to exclude Russia from participating in any exploitation of Ukraine’s undeveloped mineral and energy resources.
That much is made clear by one of the articulated predicates to the agreement:
WHEREAS the United States of America and Ukraine wish to ensure that those States and other persons that have acted adversely to Ukraine in the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine following a lasting peace;
Locking Russia out of any negotiation over Ukraine’s economic future perhaps does not possess the short-term and near-term consequences of sanctions, but the long-term impact could prove just as destructive to Russia.
Almost by default, a signed framework agreement puts the onus on Putin to likewise produce a signed deal with the US over….”something.”
A signed deal would have demonstrated that Ukraine and Zelenskyy were prepared to enter into difficult diplomacy as an alternative to pursuing a forever attritional war. That willingness to shift the prevailing narrative surrounding the war in Ukraine would very quickly translate into geopolitical leverage against Russia.
In that regard, if Zelenskyy thought that US involvement in peace negotiations gave Ukraine some sort of edge, he was probably correct.
With no signed deal, however, any leverage Zelensky might have enjoyed over Russia as a result of Trump’s negotiations has vanished.
With no signed deal, there is no chance of either Zelenskyy or Putin actually giving peace a chance.
World Leaders Are Not Helping
The reactions of world leader’s on both sides of the war in Ukraine were both varied and not terribly useful.
Putin’s longtime associate and Deputy Chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dimitry Medvedev, hardly helped advance the cause of diplomacy in the aftermath of Zelenskyy’s meltdown.
Some will say I am being a tad naive, but Medvedev reveling in Ukraine’s misery is the sort of juvenile antic that makes future engagement with Russia difficult. This was a point Trump made in the press conference before Zelensky’s meltdown.
While Medvedev’s tweet might play well with Russian audiences, it also drove home the premise that Russia hates Ukraine and Zelensky more than Russia cares about its soldiers. That simply is not a sound platform for negotiating any sort of peace deal.
Yet it does not stop with Medvedev or even the Russians broadly.
Spain’s Pedro Sanchez reflexively tweeted his country’s support for Zelensky’s mouth.
Sovereign nations of course have the right to take whatever positions they wish. We can even say the leaders of sovereign nations are free to share those positions on X—or any other social media platform.
But neither Macron nor Sanchez are taking into account the reality that Zelenskyy decided to have his spurt of emotional incontinence in the Oval Office, in front of the cameras, and before the deal was signed.
As a general rule, one does not walk into someone else’ house as a guest and proceed to behave boorishly. The technical term for that is “bad manners”
If Zelenskyy resented the minerals deal, he always had the option of not traveling to Washington. He always had the option of not telling corporate media he was ready to sign the deal.
He did not avail himself of either option.
Trump’s Position Is Simple: Ceasefire Now, Then Talks
Recriminations aside, President Trump’s position has always been simple and straightforward: everyone needs to stop shooting at each other, stop attacking each other, and start talking to each other.
As he prepared to depart the White House for Florida, President Trump reiterated that point to the press, calling for an “immediate ceasefire”.
With both Ukraine and Russia having suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in three years of war, why would a ceasefire not make sense to either side?
Zelenskyy pushed back on such proposals, intimating that Putin could not be trusted to honor a ceasefire, and that Ukraine needed “security guarantees” before negotiations could begin.
Zelenskyy made an appearance on Fox News on Friday evening in which he said his public spat with Trump and Vance was “not good for both sides.” But Zelenskyy said Trump — who insists Putin is ready to end the three-year grinding war — needs to understand that Ukraine can’t change its attitudes toward Russia on a dime.
Zelenskyy added that Ukraine won’t enter peace talks with Russia until it has security guarantees against another offensive.
“It’s so sensitive for our people,” Zelenskyy said. “And they just want to hear that America (is) on our side, that America will stay with us. Not with Russia, with us. That’s it.”
While Zelenskyy’s distrust of Putin is eminently understandable, strategically, the question of a ceasefire should never revolve around levels of trust.
Given that Zelenskyy was apparently moving the goalposts at the last minute on the minerals deal, hime arguing about Putin’s basic untrustworthiness is a stance rich in irony.
Putin may end up violating a ceasefire agreement. No one should have any illusions about Putin or his integrity. If Putin thinks it works to his advantage to break a ceasefire arrangement after agreeing to it, he probably will.
Still, even just a day’s respite from war would be a blessing to Ukraine’s armed forces.
A break from missile and drone attacks would allow Ukraine to start rebuilding some its battered citiscapes.
Ukraine needs a ceasefire and it needs a ceasefire now—not next month or next year, but now.
Zelenskyy is not doing Ukraine any favors by rejecting an immediate ceasefire.
For all the likely imperfections of President Trump’s minerals deal, it has the undeniable advantage of being an actual agreement on the negotiating table. It may not be the best step towards a lasting peace for Ukraine. It may not even be a sustainable step towards a lasting peace for Ukraine.
It is, however, a potential step towards a lasting peace for Ukraine. Unfortunately, it is a step Zelenskyy is not yet willing to take.
Will the negotiations over Ukraine’s mineral wealth get back on track? That is impossible to say. Certainly at this point Zelenskyy himself is still firmly unapologetic and unrepentant regarding his comments in the Oval Office, which makes a quick resumption of the final round of negotiations extremely unlikely.
How the Ukrainian legislature view todays events is itself a question mark. Ukraine’s government had to ratify the minerals deal and did so. Will they stand by the deal or will they want to impeach Zelenskyy and remove him?
About the only thing that is certain about the state of the deal is that it is a complete shambles. President Trump went into the Oval Office press conference ready to sign the deal. One wants to believe that President Zelenskyy had the same intent, and then managed to have a temper trantrum, blowing it all up.
Ultimately, Zelensky’s meltdown is a defeat for Ukraine. The minerals deal was never going to be the end of the fighting in Ukraine. The minerals deal was never going to be the beginning of the end of the fighting in Ukraine.
Still, there was at least some chance that the deal could have been the end of the beginning of negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine.
Because of Zelenskyy’s meltdown, there are no negotiations to end the fighting in Ukraine either beginning or ending.
That does not bode well for Ukraine.
The tragedy here is that if you watch the first 20 minutes you can see there was a deal on the table in good faith and you could see it was a rational and logical first step towards peace and with more of an implicit US security guarantee (by way of a shared stake) than I was expecting would be on the table. Then Zelensky burned it to the ground in real time. Whether out of petulance or because he came with no intention of signing it I don’t know. But he insulted Trump and Vance and the US. He has done a disservice to his country, his allies and the cause of peace.
My hope is that his countrymen remove him from office as soon as he is back in Ukraine and replace him with a pragmatist.
Yesterday, Peter, I asked: what will be Putin’s next move? Annnd, we’re back to square one, with a different context, but the same question: what do you think would be Putin’s best next move?