A meeting that was supposed to bolster the flimsy trust between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump descended instead into an extraordinary slanging match in the Oval Office in front of the world’s media. After a dismal couple of weeks bracketing this week’s third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the meeting in the White House opened about as badly as it could possibly have done. Instead of the world’s biggest superpower being his friend, Ukraine’s beleaguered leader now finds himself squeezed between US and Russian leaders who seem to agree more with each other than with him.
The backdrop was hardly propitious. The US had begun talks with Russia without inviting Kyiv. Trump had pressed Zelenskyy to agree an initially extortionate mineral-sharing deal, and called him a dictator. Washington had sided with Moscow to back a UN resolution on the war that did not criticise Russia. By the time the two men met, the minerals deal looked a little less like racketeering. But what is now clear is that the US has abandoned Ukraine.
The Zelenskyy team made what turned out to be several miscalculations. One was to offer the US a deal to share Ukraine’s resources, as part of a broader “victory plan”. This was meant to incentivise the White House to strengthen Kyiv’s hand before any talks with Moscow and provide a postwar security backstop to deter further Russian aggression. The second was to set too much store by Trump’s “peace through strength” campaign slogan.