Once Banished From Trump’s White House, Zelensky Has New Hope

 

Once Banished From Trump’s White House, Zelensky Has New Hope

 

In his zigzagging approach to ending the war in Ukraine, President Trump has shifted his frustration — for now — from Ukraine’s leader to Vladimir Putin.

 

Michael Crowley

By Michael Crowley

Reporting from Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/trump-ukraine-russia-zelensky.html

May 1, 2025

 

Feb. 28 was one of the darkest days for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion three years earlier. An Oval Office visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky meant to win favor with President Trump turned into a televised shouting match, prompting Mr. Trump to banish his guest from the White House without even serving him a planned lunch.

 

Mr. Trump was already a deep skeptic of U.S. support for Ukraine. But after the disastrous meeting with Mr. Zelensky, he accelerated his diplomacy with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, drafting a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine that offered major concessions to Moscow. Ukraine’s supporters were in panic.

 

But there is new hope in Kyiv.

 

A day after the Trump administration announced an economic deal with Ukraine that gives the United States a stake in its future mineral revenues, analysts say the country’s prospects look brighter than they have in months.

 

“These are very good signs that something might be shifting,” said Alina Polyakova, the president and chief executive of the Center for European Policy Analysis.

 

“It does seem like there’s change from the previous approach” by the Trump administration, she said, calling the minerals deal “a win-win for both sides” that Ukraine negotiated “very savvily.”

 

Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky also appeared to have a friendly meeting on Saturday at the Vatican, as Mr. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Mr. Putin’s demands in the separate talks to settle the war.

 

Analysts cautioned against drawing firm conclusions about Mr. Trump’s intentions toward Ukraine, however. The president’s zigzagging approach has confounded observers as he veers between tactics and shifts blame from one side to another and back again.

 

Adding to the confusion are sharp differences among Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers about the right approach. Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who has met with Mr. Putin four times, speaks in terms sympathetic to — and sometimes in close harmony with — Kremlin talking points. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, by contrast, was a vociferous critic of Mr. Putin during his Senate tenure and has struck a more skeptical tone.

 

The chaotic approach underscores the folly of Mr. Trump’s claim as a candidate last year that he could somehow settle the conflict in just 24 hours. This week he reached 100 days in office without even a temporary cease-fire to show for his persistent efforts — a subject of obvious irritation for Mr. Trump.

 

“The president tends to want to get results quickly, and this has been a very frustrating process,” Ms. Polyakova said.

 

At the moment, Mr. Trump’s frustration appears to have shifted from Mr. Zelensky to Mr. Putin.

 

The Russian leader has welcomed Mr. Trump’s diplomacy and talk of a transformed U.S.-Russia relationship. But on the matter of ending the war he began, Mr. Putin has dragged his feet. Many analysts say Mr. Putin believes he has the upper hand in the conflict and has little motivation to end the fighting without even more concessions than Mr. Trump has offered him.

 

Mr. Putin may also have banked on Mr. Trump’s long — and in many ways continuing — record of giving him what he wants.

 

But Mr. Putin may be testing the limits of that strategy. In recent weeks Mr. Trump has leveled sharp criticism at a Russian leader he has sometimes contorted himself to avoid offending. “Vladimir, STOP!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media last week after a particularly deadly Russian missile attack on Kyiv. “Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”

 

Now Mr. Trump faces critical decision points that could help decide Ukraine’s fate. His choices are especially hard, analysts say, because Mr. Trump’s desire for a quick peace is in tension with his innate mistrust of Mr. Zelensky and his admiration for Mr. Putin.

 

The first big choice Mr. Trump faces is whether to challenge Mr. Putin. The Russian leader’s demands for a peace agreement include things that Mr. Zelensky could never sell to his people, such as recognition of Russian control over five occupied Ukrainian regions and an end to Western military support for Ukraine. While Mr. Trump has shown a willingness to make big concessions to Mr. Putin, including by recognizing Russian control over the Crimean Peninsula that Moscow forcibly annexed in 2014, he has indicated that Mr. Putin is asking too much.

 

After another recent Russian missile barrage into civilian areas, Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Saturday of Mr. Putin that “maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently.”

 

Mr. Trump even threatened to escalate U.S. economic pressure on Russia, including by introducing “secondary” sanctions that would penalize countries that trade with Moscow. (Targets could include China and India, which have increased their purchases of Russian oil in recent years.)

 

Mr. Trump’s “irritation and impatience and even frustration with Putin is way up,” said William B. Taylor Jr., who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.

 

Mr. Trump may now be less “star-struck” by the Russian leader than he was in his first term, Mr. Taylor said, and therefore more willing to challenge him.

 

“I think Trump is in a stronger position now vis-à-vis Putin than he was in his first term. Putin is diminished,” Mr. Taylor said. He added: “He’s now the junior partner to the Chinese. His economy is in very bad shape.” (Mr. Taylor also served as the senior U.S. diplomat in Kyiv during Mr. Trump’s first term.)

 

A close Trump ally in Congress, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, says he will soon have a veto-proof majority for a bill to impose new sanctions on Russia and tariffs on consumers of its energy resources.

 

As Mr. Putin loses favor, Mr. Zelensky appears to have maneuvered himself out of the doghouse.

 

One Ukraine expert added that European leaders, notably including Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France, served as “marriage counselors” between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky.

 

The progress was visible in the impromptu private meeting the men held on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral at the Vatican last weekend, during which they sat almost knee to knee in a marble rotunda, looking intent but not hostile.

 

While neither made public the details of their chat, both sides depicted the 15-minute session as positive, and Ukrainians were buoyed to see Mr. Trump condemn Russia’s latest attacks on Ukraine shortly afterward.

 

Analysts also said that Mr. Zelensky successfully negotiated a much better minerals deal than the one originally presented to his government in February, which critics called tantamount to extortion.

 

Mr. Zelensky’s government hopes that, by playing to Mr. Trump’s powerful profit motive, the minerals deal will give him a new interest in Ukraine’s survival.

 

Ukraine’s gains on that agreement may portend well for peace talks, said Nataliia Shapoval, the head of the KSE Institute, a prominent Kyiv think tank. “In the rules of the game of the Trump team, Ukraine proved itself worthy of negotiations,” she said.

 

Still, many Ukraine supporters are tempering their hopes. Mr. Trump has sought Mr. Putin’s favor for years, publicly excusing his military aggression and even rejecting widespread charges that Mr. Putin is complicit in corruption, murder and war crimes.

 

Should he shy from confronting the Russian leader, Mr. Trump will have another big decision to make. Vice President JD Vance recently warned that the United States might “walk away” if the peace negotiations do not progress soon, and Mr. Trump said in mid-April that he might say, “we’re going to just take a pass.”

 

It is unclear what that would mean. In a worst-case scenario for Ukraine, Mr. Trump would declare an end to U.S. aid for Kyiv and give Mr. Putin a green light to escalate his offensive.

 

But that presents Mr. Trump with the risk of “losing” Ukraine in what would be a bloody and chaotic military disaster, one that could dwarf the chaos of the 2021 U.S. exit from Afghanistan that Mr. Trump calls a national humiliation.

 

Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.