Just hours after his visit to the White House, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to England and met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Downing Street on Saturday, officials told ABC News. In a joint address, Starmer said Ukraine has the unwavering support of the U.K.
Zelenskyy’s meeting on Friday at the Oval Office turned into a shouting match when President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance rebuked Zelenskyy for his handling of the war, falsely blaming him for a conflict that began when Russia’s Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion.
Zelenskyy departed the White House without signing a mineral agreement that had been in the works.
The Trump administration is now strongly considering cutting off shipments of military aid to Ukraine, according to a senior U.S. official. No final decision has been made, but that this is not the first time the administration has contemplated such a move, the official said.
If the administration does shut off military aid, it’s not clear how wide-reaching the effects will be. In the final months of the Biden administration, officials rushed to get as much military stock as they could out the door to Ukraine or to storage sites in Eastern European NATO countries. Some of the military equipment cleared for Kyiv is still in the U.S. however, officials said.
Former President Joe Biden left $3.85 billion in funds available under the presidential drawdown authority and said it would be up to the Trump administration to decide what to do with that funding.
It’s unclear how much aid remains in the pipeline to Ukraine and how much it is worth.
European leaders are holding a summit Sunday to discuss how the continent can provide security guarantees if Russia and Ukraine reach a ceasefire agreement. Zelenskyy will be participating in the summit, according to his spokesperson Serhiy Nykyforov.
Zelenskyy will meet King Charles III on Sunday in addition to participating in the European leaders’ summit, a spokesperson confirmed to ABC News.
In an interview with Laura Ingram on Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Trump “figuratively and literally ate President Zelensky for lunch today” at the White House following their fiery exchange in the Oval Office.
“It was incredibly tense in that room, and things turned bad and bitter very quickly, because, unfortunately, President Zelensky refuses to recognize the pragmatic reality about the war that his country is facing,” Leavitt said. “This war has been going on for years. His countrymen are dying, and most of all, President Zelenskyy failed to recognize that he’s walking into the Oval Office with a new sheriff in town, and that sheriff is Donald Trump.”
Leavitt said it was “absolutely” not true that the outburst in the Oval Office was premeditated by the Trump administration, and instead placed the blame on Zelenskyy, who she said provoked Vice President JD Vance.
“President Trump was excited about this economic agreement, and it was President Zelenskyy, if you roll the tape, who actually antagonized the vice president in front of the cameras and picked a fight with him,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt said it remains to be seen what’s next for the mineral deal between the U.S. and Ukraine.
“[Trump] feels this President Zelenskyy is not in the right mindset to negotiate peace,” Leavitt argued.
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