Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s high-profile White House visit got suddenly heated on Friday when, during a joint Oval Office appearance, President Donald Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance openly berated Zelenskyy in front of the entire press corps. Afterward, Trump announced that there would be no peace deal because Zelenskyy had “disrespected the United States.” Below, live updates on what went down and what it means.
Axios’ Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo pass along the view from inside the White House, which is frankly not at all surprising. Even if it wasn’t an ambush, turning on Zelenskyy was pretty close to a foregone conclusion:
Privately, Trump sees Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a pro-Biden, ungrateful lightweight destined to lose to Russia. And Trump advisers believe Zelensky sees Trump as a pro-Putin, delusional fool destined to make him lose to Russia.
To Trump’s team, it was three strikes — and now officially out of favor — for Zelensky. In their eyes, Zelensky already had two strikes against him when he sat down with Trump and Vance. …
It began with what Trump’s team saw as Strike 3 against Zelensky: He disagreed publicly with Vance, who accused Zelensky of trying to “litigate” his case before the media.
Vance said Zelensky didn’t show enough thanks to the U.S. for funding Ukraine’s defense — or to Trump for trying to bring peace. After a tense nine-minute exchange, it ended with Trump stopping the 50-minute meeting and essentially showing Zelensky the door.
Strike 2 came just before Friday’s meeting, when Zelensky arrived at the White House without a suit or jacket, as requested. It was perceived by White House staffers as disrespectful.
Strike 1, as first reported by Axios, came Feb. 15, when Zelensky publicly trashed a proposed mineral rights deal with Ukraine that he privately had discussed the day before in Munich with Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The plan Friday was for Zelensky to sign a new version of the deal as part of a plan to end the war. That didn’t happen.
The Ukrainian president, who is in London meeting with U.K. leaders on Saturday, released a long statement on X again repeatedly thanking the U.S. and Trump for supporting his country, but also insisting that security guarantees are essential to any possible peace deal, and that “I want the US to stand more firmly on our side”:
We are ready to sign the minerals agreement, and it will be the first step toward security guarantees. But it’s not enough, and we need more than just that. A ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine. We’ve been fighting for three years, and Ukrainian people need to know that America is on our side.
I cannot change Ukraine’s position on Russia. The Russians are killing us. Russia is the enemy, and that’s the reality we face. Ukraine wants peace, but it must be a just and lasting peace. For that, we need to be strong at the negotiation table. Peace can only come when we know we have security guarantees, when our army is strong, and our partners are with us.
We want peace. That’s why I came to the United States, and visited President Trump. The deal on minerals is just a first step toward security guarantees and getting closer to peace. Our situation is tough, but we can’t just stop fighting and not having guarantees that Putin will not return tomorrow.
It will be difficult without the US support. But we can’t lose our will, our freedom, or our people. We’ve seen how Russians came to our homes and killed many people. Nobody wants another wave of occupation. If we cannot be accepted to Nato, we need some clear structure of security guarantees from our allies in the US.
Europe is ready for contingencies and to help fund our large army. We also need the US role in defining security guarantees – what kind, what volume, and when. Once these guarantees are in place, we can talk with Russia, Europe, and the US about diplomacy.
In a Fox News interview with Brett Baier, the Ukrainian president stood by what he had said in the Oval Office and said he wouldn’t apologize for it, but he also acknowledged that the confrontation shouldn’t have happened on camera, and that it was “not good for both sides.” He also repeatedly thanked the American people, Congress, and Trump for supporting Ukraine. CNBC has more:
Zelenskky said he regretted his dispute with Trump and Vance was televised, and in front of reporters.
“We are thankful and sorry for this. I mean this, we wanted very much to have strong relations,” told Baier. Pressed by Baier if he should apologize to Trump, Zelenskyy said, “I think that we have to be very open and very honest.”
“And I’m not sure that we did something bad,” Zelenskyy said.
Asked if he believed that his relationship with Trump could be salvaged, the Ukrainian leader said, “Yes, of course.”
Here’s the whole interview:
“He could have just acknowledged the vice president’s remarks and moved on, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it,” a Trump official told Axios, referring to Zelenskyy’s response to Vance’s response to a reporter, when he said that diplomacy hadn’t been tried with Russia. (Zelenskyy then explained how there had been attempts at diplomacy, but Putin had broken the agreements.) And Senator Lindsay Graham said he told Zelenskyy beforehand, “don’t take the bait” — which apparently meant don’t respond negatively to anything Trump or Vance says.
But it sounds like the minerals deal wasn’t actually much of a deal yet, again per Axios:
“For several days the Ukrainians jerked us around with this minerals deal and today was the inflection point,” a senior U.S. official said. “The blank check era for Zelensky in Washington is over and he didn’t realize that.”
For their part, the Ukrainians were furious that Trump tried to force what was initially a deeply lopsided deal on them at a time when the U.S. was already leaving them out of talks with Russia about the future of Ukraine. And as Friday’s meeting got underway, Zelensky was clearly frustrated at being lectured about the trouble his own country was in.
Trump spoke with reporters again outside the White House, and said Zelenskyy wanted to “fight fight fight” rather than “end the death”:
Trump also suggested that if Zelenskyy wanted to restart negotiations, he needed to stop complaining about Putin: “He’s gotta say ‘I want to make peace.’ He doesn’t have to stand there and say, ‘Putin this, Putin that,’ all negative things. He’s gotta say…’I don’t want to fight a war any longer.’”
CBS News’ Jennifer Jacobs reports that two high-level Trump sources say Zelenskyy screwed everything up:
The White House is now uncertain if they can get the Russians and Ukrainians to stop fighting because this episode with @ZelenskyyUa raised questions about whether he can move forward toward a peace deal. It also raises questions about whether US will pause aid to Ukraine. But Trump is NOT seeking regime change in Ukraine. No discussions about who in Ukraine might be a better leader than Zelenskyy …
When Rubio and Waltz went into the Roosevelt Room to ask Zelenskyy to leave, Rubio made it clear that any further engagements today would be counterproductive. Waltz told Zelenskyy he had made a tremendous mistake, and it was a grave disservice to Ukraine and to Americans, both.
They say that the White House really did expect to do a deal today:
Trump fully intended to sign the minerals deal today. Two official binders were prepared – Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his Ukrainian counterpart and the two presidents were going to sit at a conference table in the East Room and then trumpet their success at podiums. But there were suspicions before Zelenskyy arrived today that it might fall apart. Because the Trump admin had been pushing for weeks for a minerals deal signing at the ministerial level, and Ukraine had refused.
Zelenskyy wanted security guarantees. US officials thought negotiations would be much harder with **Putin** so today have been been in disbelief that it has been Zelenskyy who has been more difficult, making maximalist demands, sources told me.
Germany’s new leader on Friday after the Oval Office incident:
And if you don’t speak French, this is a similar statement from Emmanuel Macron:
And the E.U.’s foreign-policy chief:
And Keir Starmer:
And Lindsey Graham has called for Zelenskyy to apologize or resign.
Another former top Russia hawk had a front-row seat to the drama, and he says he’s also so proud of Trump:
Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Roger Wicker may be distancing himself from the whole thing:
That’s what The Atlantic’s David Frum thinks Trump and Vance just did for all the world to see:
No, the meeting did not go badly for Ukraine. It exposed in the most undeniable, unequivocal way possible the pro-Putin commitments of the president and vice president. That was information Americans and allies needed to have clear before them.
Phony friendliness and behind-the-scenes treachery from Trump and Vance would have been much more dangerous to the cause of freedom in Ukraine than the self-exposure by both men.
How Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. reacted as it played out:
There is no confirmation of that yet — and there may never be. But considering the prepared-seeming nature of Vance’s remarks, and the speed with which the White House began to spin the confrontation as a win, it certainly seems likely Trump and his team planned to get in Zelenskyy’s face somehow.
Also:
Vladimir Putin special envoy Kirill Dmitriev called the confrontation “historic.”
Also, Russian state media was there:
Via Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich:
WH OFFICIALS TELL FOX: -TRUMP KICKED OUT ZELENSKYY
– HE DID NOT WALK OFF ON HIS OWN -RARE MINERALS DEAL WAS NOT SIGNED.
– WH SAYS “UKRAINIANS WERE BEGGING TO RESET” BUT RUBIO AND WALTZ INFORMED THEM ZELENSKYY NEEDS TO LEAVE WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS, RETURN WHEN HE’S READY FOR PEACE
– THE PRESIDENT AND US OFFICIALS FELT DISRESPECTED BY ZELENSKYY’S RHETORIC AND DEMEANOR
– CITED THAT HE WAS “SHRUGGING AND ROLLING HIS EYES” DURING THE CONVERSATION
**WHEN I WENT TO UPPER PRESS TO ASK WHAT WAS GOING ON, THE LUNCH THAT TRUMP AND ZELENSKYY WERE SUPPOSED TO DINE ON AND TALK OVER WAS SITTING IN THE HALLWAY. I’M TOLD WHITE HOUSE PRESS OFFICE STAFFERS WILL BE EATING IT.
The acrimonious meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy prompted strong but mixed reactions across the political spectrum.
House GOP leader Steve Scalise praised Trump but did not specifically reference the standoff:
Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, denounced the encounter on social media:
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, shared a clip of the tense exchange, writing, “Our leaders acting like ventriloquist dummies for Putin. Disgusting.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Trump and Vance are doing Putin’s dirty work.”
House Republican Don Bacon, who backs support for Ukraine, called it “a bad day for America’s foreign policy”:
Piers Morgan, the conservative British TV anchor and former Trump ally, wrote, “The only winner from today’s Oval Office debacle is Vladimir Putin … and anyone who thinks that is a good thing for the world is stunningly deluded.”
The White House is spinning up a storm, however, praising the fight as Trump standing up for Americans:
Real America’s Voice chief White House correspondent Brian Glenn really outdid himself in joining the attack on the Ukrainian president (who promptly referred to a suit as a “costume”):
In case you were wondering how somebody like that got into the White House press pool, the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell notes that he’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend:
The reporter who asked Zelensky if he owned a suit, Brian Glenn, is from the pro-Trump network Real America’s Voice and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend. He got one of the rare Oval Office interviewer spots after the White House blocked the Associated Press
A White House official told RealClearPolitics that Trump asked him to leave.
And yes, the official press conference is cancelled, as well.
In a Truth Social message, the president tried to scold Zelenskyy, indicating that the Ukrainian leader’s behavior in the Oval Office “disrespected the Unites States” and was thus some kind of deal-breaker:
We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today. Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure. It’s amazing what comes out through emotion, and I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.
Watch the full uninterrupted exchange:
A video of the entire Oval Office event, before and after that, is here.
Which suggests the confrontation was perhaps intentional:
Trump also got heated with a reporter who asked about Russia breaking a ceasefire — and he made all kinds of weird comments, bringing up Hunter Biden at length:
A flurry of press-pool reports capture a sudden standoff between the leaders:
