Zelensky, Who Stood Up to Putin, Now Refuses to Bow to Trump
The televised clash between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky created the most severe breach between Washington and Kyiv since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014. Yet, in a way, this confrontation was inevitable.
In February 2022, as Russian tanks reached the outskirts of Kyiv and Russian artillery started pommeling the Ukrainian capital, President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with a series of world leaders, including former President Joe Biden, who all offered friendly advice.
Ukraine would be overrun in a matter of days, they warned, and Zelensky should flee. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson even offered London as the seat of a Ukrainian government in exile – along the lines of the exiled Polish government established after the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of 1939.
At the time, Zelensky politely rejected this counsel, and threatened to fire any of his aides who suggested he abandon his headquarters. What Ukraine needed was weapons, Zelensky told his foreign counterparts.
“We are here,” he then addressed Ukrainians in a video recorded outside his headquarters, a message released as Russian state TV claimed he had escaped to Poland. “We are defending our independence, our state, and that is how it will be.” The images from Zelensky’s Friday fight with President Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office were no less dramatic. The two presidents spoke over each other, as the Ukrainian leader insisted that his country won’t accept the word of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a guarantee for future peace, even as Vance berated him for being ungrateful and rude.
This televised clash – after which Zelensky and the rest of the Ukrainian delegation were asked to leave the White House – created the most severe breach between Washington and Kyiv since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine now faces not just a cut-off in vital American military assistance, but a possible US agreement with Moscow that leaves Ukraine isolated as a sanctions-battered Russia is welcomed back into the global economy.
Many Ukrainians, and the country’s supporters, watched this confrontation aghast – as Moscow rejoiced.
“The two alpha males clashed. Zelensky in that respect is similar to Trump – he very much relies on his own instincts, and not on the system, and is not ready to subordinate,” said Bartosz Cichocki, who served as Polish ambassador to Kyiv in the first two years of the war.
Yet, in a way, this confrontation was inevitable given that Trump has essentially embraced Putin’s vision of the conflict, telling Zelensky that he had to take an unfavourable deal because the Ukrainian leader had “no cards.” The visit was preceded by a series of humiliations, including Trump describing Zelensky as a “dictator,” demanding that he sign away the country’s mineral rights to compensate for past aid, and the US voting alongside Russia and North Korea against a United Nations resolution that condemned Moscow for the 2022 invasion.
“It’s obvious that Zelensky will not give up unconditionally to follow Uncle Sam,” said Cichocki, one of a handful of foreign diplomats who remained in Kyiv as it was under Russian onslaught. “Ukraine has lost too much blood, and Zelensky has his own election sooner or later. He understands perfectly well that if he capitulates he will be removed immediately.” The spat in the Oval Office has also highlighted just how much the views about Zelensky, and about Ukraine, have diverged on the two sides of the Atlantic as relations between the US and its European allies continue unravelling.
“By refusing to bend in Washington, Volodymyr Zelensky was the honour of Europe. Now, it is upon us Europeans to decide what we want to be. And whether we want to be,” tweeted French Prime Minister François Bayrou, as most other European leaders posted statements of solidarity with Ukraine and its president.
In America, meanwhile, even Republican leaders who used to be friendly to Ukraine, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, professed admiration for Trump’s handling of the encounter. “I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelensky again,” he said. Richard Grenell, a senior Trump adviser, retweeted a post by a Ukrainian politician currently in prison for treason who demanded Zelensky’s impeachment.
At the meeting with Trump, Zelensky “made a choice for war. It is his common choice with Putin,” another opposition Ukrainian politician, Oleksandr Honcharenko, posted on Telegram. “Ukraine is above everything. It’s also above the biggest ego and pride.” Zelensky’s bitter rival and predecessor as president, Petro Poroshenko, however, said that the time is not right to criticise the incumbent. “What Ukraine needs now is unity,” he said. “Half of Ukraine was unable to fall asleep after yesterday’s video in Washington … But the relationship between Ukraine and the United States of America is not just the relationship between Zelensky and Trump, it’s a relationship of two great peoples who know that democracy and freedom are not empty words.” A former comedian who grew up on the gang-infested streets of the decaying industrial city of Kryviy Rih, Zelensky has clashed with Trump before – most notably over the US president’s 2019 request to investigate Hunter Biden, and the withholding of military aid until that “favour” occurred. Those experiences, people close to him say, have stiffened Zelensky’s resolve against allowing himself to be treated like a pawn again.
Disregarding American and Western advice paid off for Zelensky, and for Ukraine, back in 2022. “Everyone assumed at the time that we were doomed, and they were all telling us to flee,” said Oleksiy Reznikov, who served as defence minister at the time. “But we couldn’t care less about their assumptions. We understood that we have nowhere else to go, and that we have to fight. And we did.” Far from being all-mighty, the Russian army was defeated around Kyiv in a few weeks. By the end of March, Moscow’s forces were retreating from northern Ukraine, leaving hundreds of torched tanks and armoured vehicles behind. A series of Ukrainian counteroffensives later that year regained large areas of the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, with the part of Ukraine under Russian occupation halved by the end of the year.
In part, those counteroffensives were enabled by US and European military aid that started flowing to Ukraine as Zelensky made the moral – and strategic – case for aiding his country to audiences worldwide, speaking over the heads of reluctant politicians to university commencements and rock festivals.
“Sympathy based on moral arguments was a game changer. Some governments acted the way they did not merely based on their practical considerations, but under enormous pressure from their public opinions,” Ukraine’s then foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said at the time.
That sheen has worn off over time, and support for Ukraine – a bipartisan issue in the US in the beginning of the war – has turned into a political football, with many Republican politicians, including Vance, embracing much of the Russian narrative of the conflict. At the Munich security conference last year, Vance made a point of refusing to meet with Zelensky, even as the rest of the US congressional delegation gathered with the Ukrainian leader.
The situation on the battlefield is also much tougher today than in late 2022. Russia has regrouped, reorganised its military and – with weapons from North Korea and Iran, and technology and economic assistance from China – has been slowly but inexorably advancing for a year and a half.
Still, despite grinding battles, Russia has only been able to move from just under 18 per cent of Ukraine in mid-2023 to just over 18 per cent of the country today, and Ukrainian commanders say that the battlefield situation is difficult but far from catastrophic.
To Zelensky and his aides, the peace deal being considered by Trump – a ceasefire without any American security guarantees – is tantamount to a surrender, considering Putin’s record violating the previous ceasefires in 2015 and in 2022. Zelensky’s attempts to point to that history in the Oval Office on Friday triggered the heated exchange, as Trump insisted Putin would honour promises to him.
While American support, especially in intelligence and air defences, is vital, Ukraine has enough weapons to keep resisting for several months, perhaps until the end of the year, even if it is severed. Ukraine’s own military industries – and those of its European allies – are rapidly ramping up capacity.
“What do you mean, we have no cards? The situation at the front has now stabilised,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign relations committee. “Part of the Kursk region [in Russia] is under the control of the Ukrainian army. And in the Black Sea, the Russian ships are afraid to enter.” Last year, US military assistance was halted for several months because of Republican opposition in Congress – and by the time the flow of weapons resumed, Ukraine had lost the strategic town of Avdiivka and other areas of the eastern Donbas region. Mykola Bielieskov, a senior fellow at the state-run National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv, said air defence would be the hardest gap for European allies to fill, if the US pulled military aid from Ukraine. But he was confident Ukraine would hold out – albeit at a high cost in blood.
“We have no choice but to continue to fight,” he said. “Both short term and long term, it will be difficult.” Among Ukrainian troops on the front lines, the mood was more of quiet pride than despair after the clash in the Oval Office. “I am proud of Zelensky, who stood up for our honour. He stood up for our soldiers so they wouldn’t have just died for nothing,” said a platoon commander who goes by the call sign Zherekh.
“I saw attempts to humiliate and mock the president of a country that has been in blood for three years. This is immoral behaviour,” said another soldier, a drone operator named Mykhailo Kudliak.
“Nothing changed here. We will keep fighting – with what we have,” added a special-forces operator.
Asked on Fox News on Friday night about Senator Graham’s suggestion that he resign, Zelensky said such decisions were up to the Ukrainian people: “Americans vote for the American president, each European country votes for their president, and only Ukrainians … vote for their president.”
The Wall Street Journal
