Volodymyr Zelenskyy
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Stop criticising Trump and sign $500bn mineral deal, US official advises Kyiv
White House officials have told Ukraine to stop badmouthing Donald Trump and to sign a deal handing over half of the country’s mineral wealth to the US, saying a failure to do so would be unacceptable.The US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, should “tone down” his criticism of the US and take a “hard look” at the deal. It proposes giving Washington $500bn worth of natural resources, including oil and gas.Waltz said Kyiv was wrong to push back against the US president’s approach to peace talks with Moscow, given everything the US had done for Ukraine. He denied accusations the US had snubbed Ukraine and America’s European allies by excluding them from talks earlier this week with Russia. This was routine “shuttle diplomacy”, he said.“Some of the rhetoric coming out of Kyiv … and insults to president Trump were unacceptable,” Waltz later told reporters at the White House.“President Trump is obviously very frustrated right now with president Zelenskyy, the fact that he hasn’t come to the table, that he hasn’t been willing to take this opportunity that we have offered.”On Wednesday, Trump called Zelenskyy “a dictator” who refused to hold elections and blamed Ukraine for the war. Zelenskyy, for his part, said Trump was living in a Kremlin “disinformation bubble” and that he wished Trump’s team were “more truthful”.The US’s rapid dumping of Zelenskyy as an ally was underlined when Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, cancelled a press conference in Kyiv. Journalists were summoned to the presidential palace to ask questions after his meeting with Zelenskyy but were stood down.Later Zelenskyy said he had a “good discussion” with Kellogg. It covered the battlefield situation, how to return Ukrainian prisoners of war, and “effective security guarantees”. He said he was grateful to the US for its assistance and bipartisan support, adding: “It’s important for us – and for the entire free world – that American strength is felt.”Kellogg is seen as the most pro-Ukrainian of Trump’s entourage. He did not take part in a meeting earlier this week between the US and Russia in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. One Ukrainian official said Kellogg had been sidelined from the peace talks, adding that Zelenskyy was in an “engaged” frame of mind and “highly motivated”.The envoy is due to leave Kyiv on Friday after a three-day trip. It was unclear if he would take up Zelenskyy’s proposal that they visit the frontline and talk to senior commanders, who are fending off a superior and advancing Russian force in the war-torn east.Ukrainians are sceptical any deal with Moscow will stick and believe Vladimir Putin’s original war goals – to conquer as much territory as possible – are unchanged. The US vice-president, JD Vance, said on Thursday that talks with Russia were making progress. “I really believe we are on the cusp of peace in Europe for the first time in three years,” he said, adding that Trump was determined to stop the war.Vance told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland: “I think with president Trump, what makes him such an effective negotiator, and I have seen this in private, is that he does not take anything off the table … Everything is on the table. And of course that makes the heads explode in America because they say: ‘Why are you talking to Russia?’”There were further signs that the Trump administration now considers Ukraine an adversary, and is working against it on a diplomatic level.According to Reuters, the US was refusing to co-sponsor a draft UN resolution to mark the third anniversary on Monday of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. The resolution condemns Russian aggression and reaffirms Ukraine’s sovereignty and pre-2014 international borders, before Russia annexed Crimea and started a covert military takeover of the eastern Donbas region.This is the first time since the war started that the US has failed to back the resolution. About 50 countries are likely to support it, including the UK and most EU governments, it is understood.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe White House was blocking a similar statement from the G7 group of countries blaming Russia for the conflict, the Financial Times reported. It said US envoys had objected to the phrase “Russian aggression” and had not signed off on a plan to allow Zelenskyy to address G7 leaders by video.Meanwhile, the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the White House could be willing to lift sanctions on Russia, or increase them, depending on Moscow’s readiness to negotiate. Bessent visited Kyiv this week, presenting Zelenskyy with the demand for minerals and saying it was “payback” for previous US military assistance.Bessent said he had received assurances Ukraine would sign the deal. On Wednesday, however, Zelenskyy said the US had provided $69.2bn in assistance under the Biden administration – far less than the figure the new White House is demanding. He said an agreement depended on the US giving security guarantees for a postwar settlement.European leaders have offered support to Ukraine, including Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron. Zelenskyy said he spoke on Thursday to Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. “We deeply appreciate Denmark’s clear stance on a true peace – the peace we all strive for, that must be securely guaranteed,” he wrote on social media.The Kremlin has reacted with jubilation to Trump’s unprecedented attacks on Ukraine and to his false claim Zelenskyy has a 4% popularity rating. The actual figure is 57%, according to the latest opinion polls. “The rhetoric of Zelenskyy and many representatives of the Kyiv regime leaves much to be desired,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said.Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and now deputy chair of Russia’s security council, said he was stunned at how quickly Trump’s stance on Ukraine had evolved. “‘A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Medvedev posted on X.He added in English: “If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud. Trump is 200 percent right.” More
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Kyiv’s White House wooing implodes as Zelenskyy tells the truth about Trump | Julian Borger
All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump.All America’s allies, the great majority of Republican leaders who have bowed to him, and a good number of his own cabinet, know full well that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble, but Zelenskyy said it out loud at a press conference on Wednesday.In this new world where the foreign policy of the most powerful country on Earth has been rapidly reorganised around the fragile ego of a sullen and resentful old man, you might as well launch missiles at America’s eastern seaboard as utter a few words of rebuke.Zelenskyy was aware of this. On Tuesday, he had complained that his country was being excluded from talks about its fate between the US and Russia in Riyadh. They were “about Ukraine but without Ukraine”, he said.It was a fair point. What happened in Riyadh was an upending of western policy towards Ukraine, but none of that matters any more. This is year zero as far as Trump, Elon Musk and their supporters are concerned. The Ukrainian president’s gripe triggered a meltdown in Mar-a-Lago, where Trump told stunned reporters that Ukraine had started the war, and that Zelenskyy had a 4% approval rating.It is hardly surprising Zelenskyy lost his cool. Part of the reason he has a 57% confidence rating in the latest poll (13% above Trump’s own current standing) is because he has led his country through years of war with his heart vividly on his sleeve. Having been subjected to eight years of Russian aggression, followed by an entirely unprovoked full-on invasion which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, and then to be told on the world stage that: “You should have never started it”, would be too much for most people.When slighted and sprayed with Trumpian falsehoods, other world leaders, with much less at stake, have resorted to a “smile-and-wave” default strategy, deflecting direct questions and changing the subject to some aspect of relations with Washington that is still functioning normally.Zelenskyy did not do this on Wednesday. Instead, he said out loud the bit that European leaders keep quiet. Trump, he observed, is “trapped in this disinformation bubble”. He was stating the obvious, but not even Zelenskyy could have known how fetid the air inside Trump’s bubble has become. Now we know.Trump’s tirade on his own app, Truth Social, is a distillation of the greatest hits of Russian disinformation from the past three years. He said Zelenskyy was “A Dictator without Elections” (something Trump has never said about Putin) who had hoodwinked the Biden administration into a $350bn war of choice, which only “TRUMP” could fix. The president’s repeated references to himself in the third person and all caps erased any lingering doubts about the single unifying compulsion now driving Trump foreign policy.The child who guilelessly points out the emperor has no clothes is the hero of the folk tale, but the emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s story did not have a vast nuclear arsenal and the world’s mightiest army. Telling the truth is cathartic, but getting into a personal spat with Trump amid the dizzying euphoria of his restoration to the Oval Office risks serious damage to your country.That begs the question: what will work with Trump now? He admires autocrats and is eager to please them, but that is not really an option for the world’s remaining democracies. The hope in western European capitals, based on patchy evidence from the first Trump term, is that if they can make discreet common cause with the calmer heads around Trump he can be gently steered away from his more extreme whims.In that regard, they have some faith in Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff. They may be able to talk the president out of his stated plan to own and ethnically cleanse Gaza, if only because it would be so disastrous for the US. But from the evidence of Trump’s rants, the poison about Ukraine has seeped deeper into the president’s nervous system.Zelenskyy’s best option might be to persevere with the offer of an American share in Ukraine’s rare earths. Trump’s first offer was to take half of the spoils with no security guarantees in return. But the absurd opening offer is likely to be just part of his “art of the deal” brinkmanship. Further negotiations may distract him, like a dog with a bone, from his profound pro-Putin impulses.It is a long shot. It is also an act of faith to believe this Trump episode in American history will eventually pass. But we are not even one month into his chaotic second term. For a country like Ukraine, facing an existential threat, it is going to be a very long four years. More
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The Guardian view on Trump’s diplomacy: when the US knows the price and ignores values | Editorial
The Trump administration did not take red lines on Ukraine to its talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday: it cares about the bottom line. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, underscored that when he said the two sides would create a team, not only to support Ukraine peace talks but also to explore the “incredible opportunities” to partner with Moscow geopolitically “and, frankly, economically” that might result.Kyiv and other European capitals are still reeling at the full extent of Donald Trump’s cynicism when it comes to world affairs, and callous disregard for the people caught up in them. But it should be no surprise that business dealings were high on the agenda. Vladimir Putin would dearly love to end his country’s economic isolation. Russia is making the case that American energy firms and others could profit handsomely by doing business with it again.For Mr Trump, his two key interests – money and power – are not only interrelated but fungible, just as US goals and his personal interests often appear indistinguishable to him. (This is a man who launched his own cryptocurrency token days before returning to the White House, and as he sought to ease regulation of the industry).When he talks of the future of Ukraine or Gaza, he speaks not of human rights and security, lives and homes, but of laying US hands on $500bn of minerals and a “big real-estate site” respectively. He believes in cutting deals, not making peace. At the heart of his foreign policy team is Steve Witkoff, not a diplomat but a billionaire real-estate developer and golf buddy. Mr Witkoff was first appointed as Middle East envoy and then dispatched to negotiate with Moscow. The head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, was also in Riyadh – while Ukraine and European allies have been denied a seat.Mr Trump’s merging of wealth and strength were obvious even before he took office the first time. He suggested he could use Taiwan as leverage with China on issues including trade. John Bolton, who became his national security adviser, later said (though Mr Trump denied it) that the president pleaded with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to ensure he would win the next election, “stress[ing] the importance of … increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome”.Mr Trump’s Middle East policy is not only pleasing to his evangelical Christian supporters. His repugnant proposal to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, allowing the construction of an American-owned “Riviera”, is shocking but in many ways builds upon ideas long held by businessman friends as well as Israeli settlers. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a former real-estate developer charged with overseeing Middle East policy in Mr Trump’s first term, suggested last year that Gaza’s “waterfront property” could be “very valuable”. (Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, incidentally, became a major investor in Mr Kushner’s private equity firm after he left the administration.)Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to capitalise on Mr Trump’s economic transactionalism by offering access to Ukraine’s resources, notably minerals, in exchange for security. He got Mr Trump’s attention – but the terms of the resulting US demand make it look less like diplomacy than extortion. The US president prices up everything and knows the value of nothing. Others must now endeavour to show him that his plans will not come as cheaply as he believes.
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As the US retreats, Europe must look out for itself – so is Macron’s nuclear offer the answer? | Simon Tisdall
The startling contempt for Europe’s intensifying security concerns displayed by Donald Trump and his henchmen has brought an old, controversial question back to the fore: should Britain and France pool their nuclear weapons capabilities and create a Europe-wide defensive nuclear shield to deter Vladimir Putin’s Russia, if the US reduces or withdraws its support?Trump has not so far explicitly threatened to cut US nuclear forces based in Europe. But speaking last week, the president said he wanted to halve the US’s defence spending, especially on nuclear weapons. Trump often denigrates Nato, keystone of European security. Last year, he encouraged Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to member states that, in his view, spend too little on defence.Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, warned Nato defence ministers in Brussels that defending Europe was no longer a strategic priority, and raised the prospect of US troop withdrawals. In an insulting speech at the Munich security conference, he minimised the threat posed by Russia. Americans would not be taken for “suckers” by Europeans, he said.These unprecedented assaults on US-Europe ties have raised real fears of a damaging, possibly permanent rupture with Washington. It is against this volatile background that France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has called an emergency summit in Paris of European leaders, including Keir Starmer. The meeting is expected to focus on Ukraine, its future defence, and Europe’s anticipated exclusion from US “peace talks” with Russia due later this week.Yet an even bigger issue overshadows the summit: how to better organise Europe’s collective defences in the context of reduced, unreliable or nonexistent US support and overt nuclear threats from an emboldened Russia. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, has predicted that Putin could attack at least one Nato country within the next five years. Frontline Poland and the Baltic republics voice similar fears.Nato’s chief, Mark Rutte, has urged all 32 member states to expand defence spending. Many, including Britain, appear poised to do so. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, dismayed by what looks to many in Kyiv like US betrayal, told the Munich conference it was time to create an “army of Europe”. That reflects ideas long promoted by Macron, a passionate champion of more integrated, expanded, self-reliant European defence – and reduced US dependence.It is Macron who is leading the debate about a pan-European nuclear shield. The French leader gave new prominence to the idea in a 2020 speech at the École de Guerre in Paris, when he suggested a “strategic dialogue with our European partners … on the role played by France’s nuclear deterrence in our collective security”. Macron repeated the offer in 2022 and again last year.France is not proposing to place its independent deterrent, the force de frappe, which comprises about 290 warheads and operates separately from Nato, under the control of other countries – or the EU. What Macron is saying, like François Hollande and other French leaders before him, is that there exists a “European dimension” to France’s nuclear defence planning. If, for example, Berlin were threatened with nuclear destruction, that would be seen as a threat to Paris, too.“French leaders have three main worries,” an analysis published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) stated. “Firstly, there is a high risk that Trump could withdraw from Nato, or at least significantly reduce US conventional forces in Europe … Secondly, he may also reduce the number of US nuclear weapons currently deployed in Europe, though not much evidence currently supports that prospect.“Thirdly, and most importantly, a US president who loathes or dismisses many European countries is unlikely to risk American lives for Europe.” This latter argument has circulated in France since the days of Gen Charles de Gaulle, who created the force de frappe: namely that, if push came to shove, the US would go nuclear to save Boston but not Boulogne, Bratislava or Bognor Regis.Macron’s proposal raises numerous, complex questions. Among them, who could order the actual use of “Europeanised” nuclear weapons? Who would pay for such a force, especially if necessarily modernised and enlarged? Would such a move make matters worse, by accelerating US disengagement?The view from Germany, a necessary partner in any such project, is mixed. The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and anti-nuclear parties such as the Greens strongly dislike the idea (as do French leftwing and far-right parties). But Friedrich Merz, Scholz’s likely successor, is reportedly interested. Manfred Weber, a leading German conservative, told the Guardian last year that doubts about Trump meant it was time to take up Macron’s offer. Weber also urged the opening of a “new chapter” with London.The need for British involvement has also been raised by Christian Lindner, another senior German politician. “The question is: under what political and financial conditions would Paris and London be prepared to maintain or expand their own strategic capabilities for collective security?” Lindner wrote last year. “When it comes to peace and freedom in Europe, we must not shy away from these difficult questions.”The IISS study raised similar issues. “As the only other nuclear power in Europe, Britain is a natural partner for France in any exploration of how to strengthen European deterrence … [They] regularly exchange data about nuclear safety and security … The British and French nuclear arsenals combined come to around 520 warheads, numerically equivalent to China’s current deterrent force. This alone could send a stronger message to Russia.”Development of a joint UK-French nuclear umbrella, under the auspices of the European Nato allies and sidelining the US, is politically explosive for Starmer. It would raise questions about sovereign control, not least from the Eurosceptic right. It could be seen by many in Labour as fuelling nuclear weapons proliferation, bringing nuclear war closer. Putin, who has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, would view it as a provocation. So, too, for different reasons, might Trump. It would be a good test of how independent of the US the UK deterrent really is.But as the defence analyst Joseph de Weck argues in Internationale Politik Quarterly, times are changing fast. Governments urgently need solutions to Europe’s rapidly deepening security crisis. “Europeans may simply not have the time for gradualism in security integration any more,” De Weck wrote. Extending French and UK nuclear guarantees to the whole of Europe, including Ukraine, is an idea whose time has come.
Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More
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Zelenskyy says Russia will ‘wage war on Nato’ if US support for Ukraine wanes
Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday predicted Russia would “wage war against Nato” if the US stepped back from its support of Ukraine – and that he had seen intelligence suggesting that the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, was building up troops for a possible military invasion of another European country.The Ukrainian president made the claim on the NBC show Meet the Press in a wide-ranging interview ahead of an emergency summit of European leaders in Paris to discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine – and peace talks between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.“It can happen in summer, maybe in the beginning, maybe in the end of summer. I do not know when he prepares it,” Zelenskyy said. “But it will happen. And at that moment, knowing that he did not succeed in occupying us, we do not know where he will go.”Zelenskyy added that he believed Putin’s next targets could be Poland and Lithuania – which were occupied during the second world war by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – “because we believe that [Russian president] Putin will wage war against Nato”, the international military alliance formally known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.Zelenskyy said he had viewed documents indicating that Putin was “preparing to train 150,000 people” in Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow – and that he had shared that intelligence with allies.The Russian leader, Zelenskyy said, wanted to “show it for the world that it is just training” and would claim “that these are exercises that are always ongoing” in Belarus.“But it’s not truth,” Zelenskyy said. “From such point, he began the occupation [of Ukraine] three years ago. Full-scale war he began from some symbolic trainings. The missiles the first night flew from Belarus, and the invasion came from Belarus.”Zelenskyy insisted he still had trust in Donald Trump’s ability to negotiate with Russia after beginning his second US presidency in January. But Zelenskyy said he would not accept any peace agreement that excluded Ukraine from the negotiating table. He also said that some of the “messages” coming from the US in recent days, such as Vice-President JD Vance’s speech in Munich denouncing European leaders, and Trump’s comment that Ukraine “may be Russian some day”, were “a disappointment”.In a recent exclusive interview with the Guardian, Zelenskyy stressed that Europe could not guarantee Ukraine’s security without US help – and he returned to the theme in his Meet the Press interview.“There is no leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us about us,” he said, speaking in English.“Of course, the US can have a lot of decisions, economical partnerships, etc. We’re not happy with it, but they can have [them] with [the] Russians. But not about this war without us.“There are messages, which, you know, make disappointment for a lot of leaders of Europe, because they also feel sometimes that they are out of decisions.“They have to be in unity with the US otherwise, not only [can the] US lose Europe as a strategic partner, Europe also can lose the US.”His comments mirrored the alarm of European leaders at the US’s backpedalling over support for Ukraine, and Trump’s cozying up to Putin in a recent phone call, which many have portrayed as a capitulation.In advance of Vance’s divisive speech at the Munich Security Conference, European powers including Britain, France and Germany said there could be no lasting peace in Ukraine without their participation in peace talks.After it, some, including the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, took Vance to task for his comments questioning the future of the decades-old US-European alliance. Scholz also accused the US of “unacceptable interference” in its upcoming election after praise from Vance and the billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s “special government employee”, for the far-right nationalist party AfD.Zelenskyy, who in Munich on Saturday called for the formation of an armed forces of Europe, told NBC that any weakening of US support for Europe or Nato would open the door to Putin’s plans for a territory grab.“What is he waiting for? For a weakening of Nato by, for instance, policy of the US, that the US will think to take its military from Europe,” he said.“Yes, Putin thinks of that. But I will believe that the US will not take its forces, its contingents from Europe, because that will severely weaken Nato and the European continent. Putin definitely counts on that, and the fact that we receive information that he will think of the invasion against former Soviet republics.“The risk that Russia will occupy Europe is 100%, not all Europe, they will begin [with] those countries who are our friends, small countries who’ve been in the USSR, in the Soviet Union. Forgive me, but today these are Nato countries.” More
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‘They may be Russian some day’: was this the week that changed the war in Ukraine?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had some tough weeks in the past three years, but this past one may be up there with the worst of them.Back on Monday, in an hour-long interview with the Guardian at his Kyiv offices, the Ukrainian president was in a cautiously optimistic frame of mind. He said he had received “positive signals from the Americans” over upcoming negotiations. His team was working to fix a date for a meeting with Donald Trump, he said, and he was sure that the US president understood the importance of coordinating his position with Kyiv before talking to Russia.Zelenskyy’s main message, which he returned to several times in the interview, was that it was vital for the US to play a key role in enforcing any potential peace settlement. If Ukraine was to be denied Nato membership, it at least required Nato-style guarantees that would deter Vladimir Putin from coming back to bite off more chunks of the country in a year or five. “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said, unequivocally.But the reality of Trump’s second term can come at you fast. By Wednesday, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had ruled out both Nato membership for Ukraine and any US role in enforcing a peace deal. Later that day, in a surprise announcement, Trump said he had conducted a 90-minute phone call with Putin, and gave a press conference afterwards during which he proceeded to rip up three years of US rhetoric on supporting Ukraine.In Kyiv, the announcements hit with a shock as jarring as the wall-shaking booms from Iskander missiles that had been shot down on the outskirts of the city in the early hours of that morning.It had been a “bad war to get into” for Ukraine, said Trump, suggesting it was Kyiv’s choice to be invaded. He declined to say that Ukraine would be an equal partner in future negotiations, disparaged Zelenskyy’s poll ratings and repeatedly emphasised that his priority was regaining the money the US had spent on aid to Ukraine over the past few years, bandying around figures that appeared to have been plucked from thin air.View image in fullscreenHe doubled down on Hegseth’s insistence that Ukraine restoring its territorial integrity was unlikely, and even suggested that Russia might in some way deserve to keep the occupied territory because “they took a lot of land and they fought for that land”. The readout of the call said Trump and Putin had talked about the “great history” of their respective nations and discussed the second world war, all of which will have been music to Putin’s ears.Perhaps the Trump comment that caused the most anger in Ukraine was the casual remark in a television interview that “they may be Russian some day, they may not be Russian some day, but we’re gonna have all this money in there and I said I want it back.” It was a flippant dismissal of Ukraine’s existential fight to defend itself from Russian occupation, wrapped up in a demand for cash.In response, Zelenskyy has been walking an unenviable diplomatic tightrope. He knows that if he starts even to gently criticise the US president, it could make things worse for his country. On Monday, he offered careful compliments, tipping his hat to Trump’s “decisiveness”. He repeated the description on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, when JD Vance, the US vice-president, made the keynote speech and hardly mentioned Ukraine, and when there were surely many different words in Zelenskyy’s private thoughts.There is a depressing sense of deja vu to the situation. In the early months of Zelenskyy’s presidency, back in 2019, he got dragged into an impeachment drama after Trump tried to pressure him to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine. When Trump released a memo of the call, Zelenskyy appeared to be trying to sidestep entering a criminal conspiracy by flattering Trump. (“You are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1,000%,” he said, when Trump criticised European support for Ukraine.)This time, with the stakes even higher and Ukraine’s survival as a state on the line, Zelenskyy’s team has come up with a “victory plan” designed to catch Trump’s eye. Instead of appealing to shared values or European security, neither of which get Trump excited, they instead suggested joint exploitation of Ukraine’s “rare earths” and potentially lucrative contracts for US companies in the reconstruction of postwar Ukraine.“Those who are helping us to save Ukraine will [have the chance to] renovate it, with their businesses together with Ukrainian businesses. All these things we are ready to speak about in detail,” Zelenskyy said on Monday.The pitch worked, and on Wednesday, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, arrived in Kyiv with a draft agreement on natural resources. But reports of the contents suggest it requires Ukraine to hand over 50% of its mineral wealth without being provided with any security guarantees in return. “It made people quite upset,” said one source in Kyiv. Zelenskyy has so far declined to sign.For some officials from other allied nations, many of whom have become deeply personally invested in Ukraine’s fight to throw off Russian domination, the crumbling of US support over the last week has felt like a betrayal.The EU ambassador to Ukraine, Katarína Mathernová, wrote on Facebook that she had attended the funeral of two Ukrainian soldiers in the western city of Lviv on Friday, and “cried like a child” as they were laid to rest. “How can a deal about Ukraine be made without Ukraine? How could such an agreement ever be explained to the families of the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who have fallen defending the integrity of their homeland?” she asked.Many Ukrainians say they are willing to see concessions made for the sake of a peace deal, after three long years of disrupted lives and thousands of deaths. But the key question of what security guarantees could enforce such a deal looks even harder to answer satisfactorily for Kyiv after Trump’s comments this week.On the other hand, if no deal is done, Ukraine will face an extremely difficult situation militarily. Late last month, the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet quoted Kyrylo Budanov, the head of military intelligence, as telling a closed parliamentary committee that if negotiations did not begin in earnest by summer “dangerous processes could unfold, threatening Ukraine’s very existence”. Budanov later denied making the remarks, and the SBU security service opened an investigation to try to discover the outlet’s sources, showing the sensitivity of the topic.Several sources in Kyiv said that while the frontline has stabilised since late last year, by the beginning of the summer Ukrainian forces may be in trouble, particularly if US military aid deliveries cease. The army is currently dealing with a desertion problem, difficulty in mobilising new troops and intense exhaustion among those at the frontline.View image in fullscreenHowever, some caution against the dangers of rushing into a quick deal, especially now that the spectrum of possibilities on offer from Trump appears to be so troubling. “The earlier we get to the table the worse the outcome will be,” said Vadym Prystaiko, a former foreign minister. “It’s counterintuitive, and I know it’s painful. But there are still ways. We don’t have to give up. There is a Ukrainian saying: ‘Don’t fall down before you’re shot,’” he said.Prystaiko said there ought to be ways to engage Europe more forcefully in the context of a Trump retreat, notably by finally pushing through an agreement on sending Ukraine money from frozen Russian assets. And while the outcomes for Ukraine may look bleak now, many Ukrainians remind outsiders that the country has been written off before. In February 2022 many observers expected the Russian army to overrun Kyiv in days. Instead, the capital remained standing and the population launched a fightback.“Ukraine survived for three years and Russia is still fighting for some villages in the Donbas. It’s a miracle,” said one senior security source. “I don’t believe the front will collapse, but it will get harder. We have time, but we are paying heavily for that time, first of all in the lives of our people.”As well as the future of Ukraine, Zelenskyy has his own political future to consider in the coming weeks. Both Trump and his envoy Keith Kellogg have raised the question of elections, a topic also frequently mentioned by the Kremlin as a supposed reason why they cannot negotiate with him, after his official term ended last year.In the interview on Monday, Zelenskyy bristled and came the closest to a direct criticism of the Trump administration when asked about these demands. “It’s an internal question… nobody, not even someone with a very serious position, can just say, ‘I want elections tomorrow.’ That’s the sovereign right of Ukraine and Ukrainians,” he said.Zelenskyy pointed out the challenges of holding an election in the current climate. Martial law precludes it, and even if there were a ceasefire it is hard to imagine how the logistics of a countrywide vote would work, given the millions of voters living in occupied territories, frontline areas and abroad as refugees.“Will the elections be only when we’ve solved everything in 20 years’ time? No. But we cannot just shout loudly, ‘We want elections.’ Let’s be honest, today our people would see this as something shocking,” he said.Increasingly strident criticism of Zelenskyy can be heard from some Ukrainians, amid complaints about his leadership style and a centralisation of power in the presidential administration. There was also confusion and anger over an ill-timed move this week to place financial sanctions on former president Petro Poroshenko, in what appears to be an act of political revenge. But there are few voices who think that now is the time for a vote.“Our position is that during a war there is no room for politics and especially not for elections,” said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, an MP from the Fatherland party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and a former head of the SBU security agency. “It would be the end for Ukraine. To start political or election activity would mean Putin’s victory the next day.”If some kind of sustainable peace deal is concluded in the coming months, elections might happen later in the year, analysts suggest. The big question will be whether Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the popular former army commander who now serves as ambassador to London, would stand. If he does, informal polls suggest he is likely to win; against other candidates, Zelenskyy has a much better chance.It is widely assumed that Zelenskyy himself plans to stand for another term, although when asked, he claimed that – like so much else in Ukraine – that will depend on what happens in the coming months. “That’s really a rhetorical question for me… I really don’t know. I don’t know how this war will finish,” he said. More
