President Volodymyr Zelensky has been forced once again to underscore how grateful he and his people are for U.S. support after Donald Trump moaned about receiving “ZERO GRATITUDE” from Ukraine.
“It is important that there is dialogue with the American representatives, and there are signals President Trump’s team is hearing us,” Zelensky posted Sunday in a video on X. “Everyone is offering support, giving advice, providing information—and I am grateful to each and every person who is giving this help to us, to Ukraine.”
“Thank you to America, to the President of the United States, and to all the leaders in Europe and around the world, who feel the significance of what can be decided now,” he added.
Zelensky’s address followed a virulent Truth Social post in which Trump railed against the Ukrainian president and falsely claimed neither he nor his officials had shown any appreciation for U.S. diplomatic efforts to end the bloody three-year conflict with Russia, while also taking potshots at other American allies and his predecessor at the White House.
“UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA,” Trump wrote. “THE USA CONTINUES TO SELL MASSIVE $AMOUNTS OF WEAPONS TO NATO, FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UKRAINE (CROOKED JOE GAVE EVERYTHING, FREE, FREE, FREE, INCLUDING ‘BIG’ MONEY!). GOD BLESS ALL THE LIVES THAT HAVE BEEN LOST IN THE HUMAN CATASTROPHE.”
Trump often uses Europe’s continued consumption of Russian oil as a stick to beat Europe with, even though the EU has worked to significantly reduce its historic dependence on Russian energy since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Trump himself recently granted Hungary, an Eastern European nation led by his far-right populist ally Viktor Orban, an exemption from new U.S. sanctions on Russian oil and gas.
It’s the second time Zelensky has been forced to clearly articulate his appreciation for ongoing U.S. support amid Ukraine’s bloody war following a disastrous Oval Office meeting with Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio back in February.
What was supposed to have been a ceremonial signing of a minerals deal giving the U.S. access to Ukraine’s rare earth resources instead unravelled amid heated demands from Trump and Vance that Ukraine show more gratitude and agree to a ceasefire with Russia.
The U.S. president accused his Ukrainian counterpart of “gambling with World War III,” and abruptly ended the meeting before later posting Zelensky “is not ready for peace,” that he had “disrespected the United States,” and that he could come “back when he is ready for peace.”
The fallout was swift and fierce, with other world leaders tweeting their support for the Ukrainian president, and Zelensky replying to each of their messages with a clear articulation of his appreciation for their comments.
Relations improved some around two weeks later, after U.S. and Ukrainian officials agreed at talks in Saudi Arabia on proposing a 30-day ceasefire, contingent on Russian “reciprocity.” The U.S. also immediately lifted a pause on military aid and intelligence sharing that had been instituted in the aftermath of the spat.
By the time the two leaders met for a second time at the Oval Office in August, things appeared far more cordial. Zelensky, backed by a team of other European leaders, came in with what has been described by allies as “gratitude diplomacy,” thanking the U.S. president no less than nine times in the first minute of their exchange.
The White House has consistently dithered on commitments to Ukraine since Trump assumed office for the second time in January. At times, MAGA leadership has applied unprecedented pressure on Kyiv to capitulate to Moscow. At others, they’ve toyed with granting Ukrainian forces weapons that would facilitate deep strikes into Russian territory, and even suggested it may be possible to regain all territories under the Kremlin’s control.
The situation has nevertheless now soured again in the aftermath of talks last week between U.S. and Russian officials over a prospective end to the conflict from which Kyiv proved conspicuously absent.
Those negotiations yielded a since widely leaked 28-point peace plan described by critics as effectively amounting to a demand for Ukraine’s surrender. It involves Kyiv halving the size of its military, recognizing occupied territories as Russian, and proscribing future bids for NATO membership—all core demands from which Moscow has not budged since the outset of the invasion.
The proposals have come under intense fire after top Republican lawmakers claimed Secretary of State Rubio quietly admitted to them the plans effectively amount to a Russian “wish list” for an end to the conflict, with one GOP Senator even suggesting “it looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.”
Rubio has outright denied this. “The peace proposal was authored by the U.S.,” he wrote in a statement on X Saturday. “It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”
It comes at a difficult time for Zelensky, who’s presently in the midst of a massive domestic corruption scandal implicating several of his closest political associates, and an especially challenging moment for the Ukrainian people, who face a harsh winter in the aftermath of prolonged, targeted and devastating Russian attacks against energy infrastructure in the war-torn country.
While Trump has given Kyiv until Thursday to respond to the new proposals, the U.S. president has nevertheless sought to mitigate some of that pressure in the face of intense backlash to a plan slammed by critics as overwhelmingly rewarding the aggressor in the conflict.
“No, not my final,” he told White House reporters who’d asked whether the terms his final offer. “We’d like to get to peace. It should’ve happened a long time ago.”
The president had indeed promised his supporters he would achieve peace in Ukraine on ‘Day One’ of his second term, amid a wider backdrop of often exaggerated peacemaking efforts as part of a concerted effort by his administration to secure him this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
It is now 308 days into Trump’s second term. This year’s prize went to Venezuela’s exiled opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, earlier in October.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
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