WASHINGTONย โย Standing alongside President Trump at his Palm Beach estate, Volodymyr Zelensky could only smirk and grimace without overtly offending his host. โRussia wants to see Ukraine succeed,โ Trump told reporters, shocking the Ukrainian president before claiming that Vladimir Putin is genuine in his desire for peace.
It was just the latest example of the American president sympathizing with Moscow in its war of conquest in Europe. Yet Zelensky emerged from the meeting Sunday ensuring once again that Ukraine may fight another day, maintaining critical if uneasy support from Washington.
Few signs of progress toward a peace agreement materialized from the meeting at Mar-a-Lago, where Zelensky traveled with significant compromises โ including a plan to put territorial concessions to Russia before the Ukrainian people for a vote โ in order to appease the U.S. president.
But Zelensky won concessions of his own from Trump, who had for weeks been pushing for a ceasefire by Christmas, or else threatening to cut off Ukraine from U.S. intelligence that would leave Kyiv blind on the battlefield. โI donโt have deadlines,โ Trump said Sunday.
Over the course of Trumpโs first year in office, Zelensky and other European leaders have repeatedly worked to convince Trump that Russiaโs President Putin is, in fact, an aggressor opposed to peace, responsible for an unprovoked invasion that launched the deadliest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.
Each time, Trump has come around, even going as far over the summer as to question whether Ukraine could win back the territories it has lost on the battlefield to Russia โ and vowing to North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, โweโre with them all the way.โ
Yet, each time, Trump has changed course within a matter of days or weeks, reverting to an embrace of Putin and Russiaโs worldview, including a proposal that Ukraine preemptively cede sovereign territories that Russia has sought but failed to occupy by force.
Zelenskyโs willingness to offer concessions in his latest meeting with Trump has, at least temporarily, โmanaged to keep President Trump from tilting further towards the Russian position,โ said Kyle Balzer, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. โBut Trumpโs position โ his repeated insistence that a deal is necessary now because time is not on Ukraineโs side โ continues to favor Putinโs line and negotiating tactics.โ
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Putinโs revanchist war aims โ to conquer all of Ukraine and, beyond, to reclaim parts of Europe that once were part of the Soviet empire โ remain unchanged.
Yet Trumpโs director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, whose own sympathies toward Russia have been scrutinized for years, recently dismissed the assessments as products of โdeep stateโ โwarmongersโ within the intelligence community.
On Monday, hours after speaking with Trump, Putin ordered the Russian military to push toward Zaporizhzhia, a city of 700,000 before the war began. The city lies far outside the Donbas region that Moscow claims would satisfy its war aims in a negotiated settlement.
โTrumpโs instincts are to favor Putin and Russia,โ said Brian Taylor, director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University. โUkraine and its European partners still hope to convince Trump of the obvious fact that Putin is not interested in a deal that doesnโt amount to a Ukrainian surrender.
โIf Trump was convinced of Putinโs intransigence, he might further tighten sanctions on Russia and provide more assistance to Ukraine to try to pressure Putin into a deal,โ Taylor added. โItโs an uphill battle, one might even say Sisyphean, but Zelensky and European leaders have to keep trying. So far, nearly a year into Trumpโs second term, itโs been worth it.โ
On Monday, Moscow claims that Ukraine orchestrated a massive drone attack targeting Putinโs residence that would force it to reconsider its stance in negotiations. Kyiv denied an attack took place.
โGiven the final degeneration of the criminal Kyiv regime, which has switched to a policy of state terrorism, Russiaโs negotiating position will be revised,โ Sergei Lavrov, Russiaโs foreign minister since 2004, said in a Telegram post.
Another senior Russian official said the reported attack shocked and infuriated Trump. But Zelensky, responding on social media, said that Russia was โat it again, using dangerous statements to undermine all achievements of our shared diplomatic efforts with President Trumpโs team.โ
โWe keep working together to bring peace closer,โ Zelensky said. โThis alleged โresidence strikeโ story is a complete fabrication intended to justify additional attacks against Ukraine, including Kyiv, as well as Russiaโs own refusal to take necessary steps to end the war.โ
โUkraine does not take steps that can undermine diplomacy. To the contrary, Russia always takes such steps,โ he added. โIt is critical that the world doesnโt stay silent now. We cannot allow Russia to undermine the work on achieving a lasting peace.โ
Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project, which collaborates with the Institute for the Study of War to produce daily battlefield assessments on the conflict, said that the meeting did not appear to fundamentally shift Trumpโs position on the conflict โ a potential win for Kyiv in and of itself, he said.
โU.S.-Ukraine negotiations appear to be continuing as before, which is positive, since those negotiations seem to be getting into the real details of what would be required for a meaningful set of security guarantees and long-term agreements to ensure that any peace settlement will be enduring,โ Kagan said.
Gaps still remain between Kyiv and the Trump administration in negotiations over security guarantees. While Trump has offered a 15-year agreement, Ukraine is seeking guarantees for 50 years, Zelensky said Monday.
โAs Trump continues to say, thereโs no deal until thereโs a deal,โ Kagan added. โWeโll have to see how things go.โ