If you search for a transcript of yesterday’s White House meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, almost all of them begin in the last 10 minutes of a 50-minute meeting when Vice President JD Vance responds to a reporter’s question about whether Trump believes he is too aligned with Putin.
We will come back to that moment eventually, but the event had been going on for 40 minutes before that, and indeed negotiations between Trump and Zelensky had been going on for weeks before yesterday.
Zelensky was at the White House Friday to sign a long-term mineral deal with the Trump administration. This is a deal that Zelensky has refused to sign on at least two previous occasions, once when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went to Kyiv and again at the Munich Security Conference.
The actual terms of the mineral deal don’t even really exist. The current draft reportedly calls for the creation of some new fund that does not include revenues from existing resource projects, only future ones, but then the details for how future revenues for the fund will be collected and administered is up to future negotiations.
So what the United States gets from the deal is murky. But so is what Ukraine gets, which is only a reference that the U.S. “supports Ukraine’s effort to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.”
As Doug Klain told Fox News, “This is in some ways an agreement to make an agreement.”
And for Zelensky, that is not enough. Throughout the press conference Zelensky kept stressing that he wants “real security guarantees for Ukraine.”
But for Trump, the mineral deal itself is the security guarantee. We can see this early in the discussion after Trump is asked by a reporter, “How does this provide long-term security, security for Ukraine?”
After explaining why the U.S. needs Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, Trump explains, “I think once we make the agreement that’s going to be 95% of it.”
Zelensky then responds that Russian President Vladimir Putin has broken 25 ceasefire agreements with Ukraine, and he is not willing to sign a new ceasefire agreement unless he has security agreements beyond an economic agreement with the U.S. “It’s a very good start, very good,” Zelensky says in reference to the mineral agreement, “but it will not be enough to stop this person [Putin].”
It is at this point that a reporter asked Trump if he thinks he is too aligned with Putin, and after Trump explains that “I’m not aligned with Putin. I’m aligned with the United States of America and for the good of the world,” that is when Vance jumps in.
“Look for four years, the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country,” Vance said. “The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’s words mattered more than the president of the United States’s actions. What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing.”
It is at that point that Zelensky directly questions Trump’s strategy. Zelensky recounts an agreement he signed with Putin, Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019, during Trump’s presidency, an agreement that did not work as advertised.
“All of them told me that he will never go,” Zelensky said. “We signed with him a gas contract. Gas contract, yes. But after that, he broke the ceasefire. He killed our people and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD [Vance], you are speaking about? What do you mean?”
Vance then says, “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country, Mr. President.”
To which Zelensky replies, “Yes, but if you are not strong.”
And it is at this point, after Zelensky has now publicly questioned first Trump’s wisdom and then his strength, that Vance admonishes him.
“Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.”
And then it went downhill from there.
That is what yesterday’s blowup was all about.
Trump believes the best way to achieve a short-term ceasefire and long-term peace is to enter a long-term mineral development deal with Ukraine, binding America’s interests with Ukrainian sovereignty, and that this should be enough to deter Putin from violating Ukrainian sovereignty in the future.
Zelensky simply doesn’t believe a mineral development agreement with the U.S. will deter Putin. That is why he did not sign the deal yesterday.
Zelensky is in a tough spot. Given his country’s recent history with Russia, his desire for U.S. troops to secure a ceasefire agreement is understandable.
But there is simply no appetite among Americans to place U.S. troops in Ukraine, even in just a peacekeeping capacity. Trump and Vance are only being honest with Zelensky about this reality.
Zelensky may be frustrated by the unwillingness of the U.S. to commit troops to his cause, and he is reasonable in doubting that another commercial agreement would deter Putin from future aggression.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
But Trump’s mineral deal would be dependent on Russia not occupying the land the minerals are in. It is substantively different from past commercial agreements.
Zelensky may want more from Trump, but publicly insulting him to his face in front of the press in the Oval Office, especially after he has still never apologized for campaigning on American soil for Trump’s opponent, is not going to get him a better deal.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
