From Nezavisimaya gazeta, March 3, 2025, p. 3. Complete text:
The public spat between Vladimir Zelensky and Donald Trump, which was witnessed by the whole world, will long be remembered not just on political talk shows, but also in history textbooks. It has become a very vivid illustration of our times of trouble. We can draw various conclusions from this disgraceful scene at the White House, and they will all be controversial, except for one: The West obviously no longer has a united, pro-Ukrainian front. Trump simply does not think in such categories.
In comments by Western and, specifically, American media on the scandalous talks between Trump and Zelensky, the same emotion shows through: surprise. Whatever the background to the meeting at the White House, one can’t help but wonder: Why did it have to go down like that?
There they were, on camera, the US president and vice-president scolding the head of a foreign state like he was a little boy. Trump reproaching him for being ungrateful, almost making it personal. Vance screaming that Zelensky was doing the Democrats’ bidding by arranging “propaganda tours” around the US during last year’s election campaign (what a thing to remember!). And Zelensky by turns making excuses and trying to get his own licks in receiving an insolent reminder from Trump that the Ukrainian leader was “in no position to argue” [sic; the English-language transcript reads: “in no position to dictate – Trans.]. Zelensky tried several times to get the US president to condemn Russia. Vance was the only one who managed to say anything about this. And his words were more of an invective directed at Biden, who “for four years***stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin” without achieving any practical results. It appears that Zelensky’s American counterparts generally treated Russia as a completely superfluous subject in this dispute at the White House. What they really dug into was the “personal case” of the Ukrainian president and nothing else.
The practical result of the current meeting was announced as an encore by the White House press service (which was fed the lunch that Trump and Zelensky forgot to eat in their anger). The press service said that the agreement on rare earth metals had not been signed and that this was the Ukrainian side’s fault. But it was for the sake of this document that Zelensky came to the US in the first place, at least according to Kiev and Washington.
We can, of course, view the incident in the White House as a short-lived spontaneous explosion of emotion caused by the Ukrainian president’s ill-considered attempt to challenge Trump. Trump has not been fond of Zelensky for a long time, perhaps since he tried (and failed) during his first term to receive support from Kiev in his internal political struggle. But even if there was a flash of pent-up indignation, it wasn’t just about Trump’s vindictiveness.
What we have here can be called a creative conflict. The coming together of two people who both came to politics from show business. We should never forget that, for Americans, Trump is primarily a television personality, the host of a popular show, a socialite who makes cameo appearances in movies, and only then a businessman. And Zelensky is an actor by profession. And when fate presented him with the chance to play the best role (in this case, the savior of the Fatherland and the world leader of the forces of good against the forces of evil) for a huge, appreciative audience, he enthusiastically took advantage of it, as befits an actor.
But here comes Trump, who believes that the role of world leader is for him and him alone. Other candidates should realize that their one-man show is over and get out of the way. European and American politicians hoping to reach an agreement with Trump sensed this right away. They flatter him instead of arguing with him. But Zelensky liked his own role too much. He was the only one who stubbornly objected to Trump and even reminded him of his past failures during his first term as president. And here’s the result.
This version of exploding emotions does not account for the nuances, primarily the subject of the dispute – the agreement to share revenue from Ukrainian rare earth metals. That agreement could make an impression on Trump’s target audience, the core of his electorate, which gets extremely annoyed when taxpayer money is used to support unknown countries. And Trump explains that he is prepared to turn aid into, as he loves to say, a deal: The American budget will receive money back in the form of tremendous profits from Ukraine’s fabled natural resources. The agreement’s failure will make it possible to noisily deflect the blame from Trump for continuing to support Kiev and place it squarely on Biden and Zelensky. The former signed the corresponding agreements, which the White House has to implement whether it wants to or not (at least temporarily, as the White House makes it clear), while the latter doesn’t want to pony up for them.
Finally, another explanation for the incident at the White House has to do with the incipient US-Russia negotiation process. There is room for interpretation here.
We can see Zelensky’s public flogging as a concession to Moscow and, at the same time, a black mark against him. The Kremlin has repeatedly hinted that it would prefer not to deal with him. Trump made it clear that he doesn’t like Zelensky, either, which means that the White House would not object to his resignation. This consenting attitude makes it possible to continue a constructive dialogue with Moscow.
There is also an opposite interpretation. Let’s say Trump decided after the meeting in Riyadh [see Vol. 77, No. 8, pp. 3‑7] that the dialogue with Russia wasn’t working. It’s impossible to achieve a result that can be effectively sold to the American public in no time flat, but, at the same time, he is loath to move slowly with a negotiation process that could last not several months, but several years (as Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen advised). Therefore, Trump decided to effectively put an end to his peacemaking efforts, putting all the blame on Zelensky, whom he doesn’t like.
Whatever the case, the US president’s motives may soon become clear. The 78-year-old Trump appears to be acutely aware of the fact that time is working against him. So he is not going to delay making the next moves that will bring the meaning of the scene at the White House into sharper focus.