An absolute disaster that leaves the future of Ukraine in question. The meeting between the presidents of the United States, Donald Trump, and Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, in the White House has ended in a catastrophic way, after Trump has abroad Zelenski – in public, in front of all the cameras and with an unprecedented tone – at the beginning of his meeting in the oval dispatch to deal with the future of the war this Friday. The Republican has warned the leader of the invaded country: “You have no letters” to play in a negotiation and have directly accused him: “He is playing with the third World War.” Zelenski has left in advance, without signing the planned agreement of joint exploitation of Ukrainian minerals, while in social networks Trump accused him of “not being prepared for peace.”
After the extreme acrimony demonstrated by Trump, the meeting of international leaders convened by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in London on Sunday becomes more importance than ever. The channels that were anticipated to negotiate the future of the war seem to have skipped through the air, and all kinds of questions are opened about what support will now receive kyiv from a Trump that negotiates with Moscow the end of the war, which repeats point by point the arguments of the Kremlin and that had already dodged promising security guarantees to the invaded country. Russia remains as the great beneficiary of the breakdown of bridges among the leaders of the two countries so far allies.
“I have decided that President Zelenski is not ready for peace if the United States is involved, because he believes that our participation gives him a great advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want peace. He has been disrespectful to the United States in the dear oval dispatch, ”wrote a furious Trump in his social network, Truth, after public anger and while his interlocutor was preparing to leave without celebrating the joint press conference that both had planned.
The discussion, so public, so violent, and so in view of the press, lacks precedents in contemporary diplomatic history. It is not uncommon for international leaders, or their representatives discussing, but always behind closed doors. The image of the Ukraine ambassador to Washington, Oksana Markarova, covering his face with his hands, was the best illustration of the situation.
“Either he reaches an agreement, or we leave,” said the US President, in a discussion developed in front of the press, something unprecedented in contemporary diplomatic history. “And if we go, they are going to fight alone, and it will not be pretty. They are going to fight, and they have no what, ”his reproach continued. The hostility was clearly perceived in the faces of both and the clash they have starred generates one that will receive Ukraine from the United States.
The dispute had begun when the United States vice president, JD Vance, declared the strategy of the previous administration of Joe Biden, unconditional support to Ukraine in the war, and recommended the path of diplomacy with Putin. In turn, Zelenski warned against closing agreements with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, remembering that his country already signed peace pacts with Moscow after east of East of Ukraine, the so -called Minsk agreements, and the neighboring country breached them. Vance, sitting next to Trump and that during his stage as a senator he was extremely skeptical about the help of the United States to Ukraine, replied that he considered “disrespectful” the fact of “coming to the oval office and fighting in front of the media”, which means blaming Zelenski from the sudden Trump comments. In a paternalistic language, he reproached him that he would not have been sufficiently grateful to the United States or the president.
Zelenski tried to show himself conciliatory. “We all have problems, even you. But they have an ocean in between and do not feel it now. But they will feel it later. ” Trump entered the rag: “Don’t tell us how we are going to feel … You are not in good position.”
“This is not going to work unless there is a change in attitude,” Trump added, which declared: “Putin wants an agreement, but I don’t know if you want an agreement.”
The clash was the more surprising when the US president, who last week had been very critical, even insulting with Zelenski, in recent days he seemed to have softened his position and had come to ensure that he would do his best in his negotiations with Moscow so that Ukraine recovered part of the territory occupied by Russia.
Last week the US president lashed out at Ukraine with a fare of false accusations, including that he is a “dictator without elections” and that the responsibility of the war is his, that kyiv “began” war. In turn, Zelenski accused him of living in a “misinformation bubble” of Russian propaganda.
Actually, Russia began the war in 2014 with its occupation of the Crimean Peninsula. In February 2022, the large -scale invasion of the Ukrainian territory began. Zelenski was elected democratically president in 2019 by a large majority, and his country has not celebrated elections since the beginning of the war because the martial law in force since then prohibits them expressly in combat times. On the other hand, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has praised several times as “a genius”, has an international arrest warrant for war crimes, has been undone of the opposition and remains in power through elections considered systematically little clean.
The two presidents had met this Friday to sign an economic agreement that provides Kiev to give up half of their income from the future monetization of their natural resources, including critical minerals, gas and oil. Washington claimed that having that pact gives him an incentive to defend the invaded country, as he also protects his economic investment, and Trump argues that he will help the reconstruction of the Ukrainian economy after the war.
The public break between Trump and Zelenski concludes in Washington a week of intense diplomatic activity around Ukraine, which began on Monday with the visit of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and continued this Thursday with that of the British Starmer to the White House. Both tried to start Trump security guarantees for kyiv in case of a high fire.
Although Europe is willing to form a peace force of tens of thousands of soldiers who would monitor compliance with the high fire, by themselves those troops would not be enough to deter Russia from another aggression in the future. European countries therefore claim Washington to provide a “security network”: surveillance with radars and military planes that would intervene in case of danger. But Trump has dodged to commit to it again and again despite the insistence of the allies. It refuses that Ukraine can enter NATO, emphasizes that the United States will not contribute troops on the ground in any case and declares that the best security guarantee is the mineral agreement itself, now in the air. According to this argument, the economic presence of the United States will be a sufficient deterrence factor for Putin.
