Zelensky on Trump and Putin back in March

From the Time:

"Exclusive: Zelensky on Trump, Putin, and the Endgame in Ukraine

bySimon Shuster, Mar 24, 2025

Nearly six years have passed since Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine, yet he still cringes at all the polished brass and chandeliers that crowd his office. The place does seem rather gaudy, like a room plucked straight from Mar-a-Lago, and Zelensky can’t seem to stop apologizing for it as he shows me around one evening in March...

But he did not invite me over for a tour. His basic aim, as far as I could tell, was to clear the air after his recent visit to the Oval Office, the one that became a viral sensation for the world and a source of trepidation for his country. For several interminable minutes on the morning of Feb. 28, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance had berated Zelensky, calling him ungrateful, weak and dangerous while talking over his attempts to argue back. “You don’t hold the cards,” Trump told Zelensky. “You’re gambling with World War III!”

On the advice of people he trusts, Zelensky has mostly avoided talking about the episode, not wanting to deepen a diplomatic crisis that had threatened to cost him nothing less than his country’s existence. His standard answer to questions about it has been, “Let's leave that to history.” Even now, he hopes to turn the page and move on. But his instincts rarely allow him to keep quiet for long about the things that bother him, which is partly what got him into trouble with Trump.

Going into that meeting, Zelensky says, he had it all planned out. He had been to the White House a handful of times during the war. But this would be his first sit-down with Trump in the Oval Office, and it would mark a critical point in Trump’s effort to force a peace deal in Ukraine. To make an impression, Zelensky decided to bring a set of gifts. Their aim was to break through any ill will the U.S. President felt toward Ukraine, and to dispel what Zelensky believed was the influence of Russian propaganda on the White House. 

Among the most painful exchanges in the Oval Office meeting took place near the end, when Zelensky asked whether J.D. Vance had visited Ukraine during the war. They both knew he had not, and Vance shot back that he had no interest in Zelensky’s “propaganda tours.”The insult must have stung...

Zelensky’s grand vision for peace has been cut down to size. He no longer mentions the Peace Formula in his speeches. In October, as the U.S. presidential elections drew near, Zelensky presented a less ambitious plan. It consisted of only five points. The first one called for Ukraine to receive an invitation to join the NATO alliance, while the last two took a new approach, appealing to U.S. financial interests rather than any shared values. Among the enticements Zelensky offered was access to “trillions of dollars worth of minerals” hidden beneath Ukrainian soil.

Last fall, after discussing that idea with Zelensky in New York, Trump seized on it, and his administration soon proposed a deal for the U.S. to profit from Ukraine’s mineral wealth as compensation for military support. Zelensky balked at the terms that Trump suggested in his first draft of the deal. But after weeks of tense negotiations, the U.S. and Ukraine settled on a version that both sides could accept. Zelensky and Trump were meant to sign it after their meeting in the Oval Office. Their argument scuppered those plans

The next day, Trump set the minerals deal aside and decided to get tough with Zelensky. His administration announced a suspension of aid to Ukraine, including supplies of critical intelligence, weapons and ammunition. Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, said the Ukrainians had “brought it on themselves.” Zelensky had failed in the Oval Office to demonstrate a willingness to accept Trump’s plan for peace, and the U.S. response was “sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose," Kellogg said. "Got their attention."

More than that, it hobbled Ukraine’s armed forces on the battlefield. Without access to data from U.S. satellites, they lost the ability to detect the approach of Russian bombers and cruise missiles. As a result, Ukraine had less time to warn civilians and military personnel about an approaching airstrike. The impact was most acute in the Russian region of Kursk, where the Russians made swift advances...

What bothered Zelensky most about Trump’s role in that operation had less to do with intelligence sharing than with Russian disinformation. In the middle of the battle, Trump held a call with Putin, who told the U.S. president that thousands of Ukrainian troops in Kursk had been surrounded by Russian forces. “That was a lie,” Zelensky told me. But Trump continued to amplify it.

For Zelensky it looked like part of a pattern. U.S. officials, he says, had begun taking Putin at his word, even when their own intelligence contradicted him. “I believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information,” Zelensky told me. “Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them.

The tensions that resulted from the Oval Office meeting began to dissipate about ten days later, when Zelensky and Trump sent their most senior aides for a round of talks in Saudi Arabia... 

Several hours into the talks, Yermak and his team placed a call to Zelensky and asked for instructions. He told them to agree to a ceasefire with no preconditions. In some ways, it was another massive climbdown. Zelensky has spent the entire war demanding security guarantees from the Americans and concessions from the Russians. Now nearly all of his demands had been set aside. Yermak admitted this was difficult. “But we have to be pragmatic. We have to move step by step,” he told me. “This is not the moment for idealism.”...

“Why did the Ukrainians defend themselves at the start of this war? It was because of dignity,” he told me. “We do not consider ourselves some kind of superpower," he continued, but the Ukrainians “are very emotional, and when it comes to our sense of dignity, freedom, democracy, our people rise up and unite.” What they hoped to see in the Oval Office was proof that the United States remains their ally. “But in that moment there was the sense of not being allies, or not taking the position of an ally,” Zelensky said. “In that conversation, I was defending the dignity of Ukraine.”...

But he also acknowledges that, without winning over Trump himself, he has little chance of securing a stable peace. On that front, at least, Putin’s recalcitrance may turn out to be an asset. Over the last few months, while Zelensky has given ground and made concessions, the Russian demands have only grown more extreme. While launching bombs against civilians, the Kremlin has continued to push its maximalist terms for ending the war, including the dismantling of Ukraine’s armed forces, the removal of its government, and a guarantee that Ukraine will never join the NATO alliance. 

To Zelensky’s dismay, Trump has agreed to some of these concessions without getting much in return. He has taken Ukraine’s bid to join NATO off the table. He has even suggested he would welcome Russia back into the G7, the club of the world’s wealthiest democracies. Allowing such a thing, Zelensky says, would lift the only concrete punishment Putin has faced for the invasion of Ukraine: his isolation. “That’s a big compromise,” Zelensky told me. “Imagine releasing Hitler from his political isolation.” 

As Trump has pushed to end the war, he seems to have reserved all the carrots for Russia, while the Ukrainians get the stick..."