Donald Trump’s latest meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy began with lunch and ended in a shouting match.
The attempted peace negotiation Friday reportedly saw Trump cussing out the Ukrainian leader and throwing Zelenskiy’s maps of the battlefield while insisting that he cede portions of Ukraine-controlled eastern Donbas to Russia.
Trump’s options for the war-battered leader, according to a European official that spoke with the Financial Times, were either accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms or “be destroyed.”
“If [Putin] wants it, he will destroy you,” Trump reportedly told Zelenskiy.
But leaders in Ukraine’s Parliament understand that Putin’s offer is a fundamentally impossible choice.
“To give [the Donbas] to Russia without a fight is unacceptable for Ukrainian society, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows that,” Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs the Ukrainian Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Financial Times.
European governments rushed to Zelenskiy’s defense, alarmed by Trump’s trust that the Russian dictator would end the encroachment on such terms.
“We see President Trump’s efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, all these efforts are welcome but we don’t see Russia wanting peace,” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, told the Financial Times on Monday. “We are discussing what more we can do.”
Trump (and his wife Melania) has boasted for years about his cozy relationship with Putin, but in recent months appeared to pull an about-face on his opinion of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, seemingly negotiating in favor of Ukraine.
Last month, Trump claimed that Ukraine could reclaim all of its occupied territory, and last week raised the possibility of delivering Tomahawk missiles—which have a range of more than 1,500 miles with incredible accuracy—to Kyiv should Russia not end its assault.
Putin’s other strategies for a peace deal have similarly involved egregious land grabs. Earlier this year, Trump and his allies were more than willing to reverse long-standing U.S. policy by acknowledging Crimea as part of Russia. That flub made Kremlin propagandists on state-sponsored television laugh at the downfall of American power.
Trump claimed Sunday night that he and Zelenskiy “never discussed” ceding all of Donbas, but that the Ukrainian president should just “let it be cut the way it is.”
“I think 78 percent of the land is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way it is right now,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
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