Zelenskyy says he regrets that Oval Office blowup, but he's still pushing Trump

Politico

a day ago

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he regrets that his Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump in late February spun out of control, but explained that it was his impatience to reach 'concrete decisions' during wartime that led to the blowup.
'We simply don't have that much time in our lives. I wanted concrete decisions,' Zelenskyy said on Wednesday in an interview in Odessa with the Axel Springer Global Reporters network, which includes POLITICO. 'We were unable to make certain decisions, extremely important decisions. I don't know whether America was ready to address these issues or not. I have to resolve this issue of war. You see, time is very precious. Not my personal time, but the time of my country.'
Zelenskyy also said he liked his one-on-one meeting with Trump, held two months later on the sidelines of Pope Francis' funeral at The Vatican, much 'better' than his ill-fated visit to the White House.
'We were able to discuss much more than at the other meeting, which felt like it lasted a lifetime,' Zelenskyy said, describing Trump as 'friendly.'
Ukraine's embattled president, whose assertiveness and persistent requests for additional aid also privately irked President Joe Biden and his top aides, has worked assiduously to improve his relationship with Trump since that fateful February encounter. And the two countries did eventually sign the economic agreement to jointly develop Ukraine's rare earth minerals once the war is over, a pact that was temporarily tabled when the White House visit went sideways. Yet he also suggested in the interview that even his war-torn country may be able to turn the war into a new phase.
'Relations between our countries are not entirely balanced, but that was in the past,' Zelenskyy said. 'And today we must do everything we can to ensure that the next meeting in the Oval Office is successful for both countries. The lives of many people depend on it. And peace depends on it. Many countries in Europe depend on whether there will be security and peace in Ukraine. The security and stability of many countries in Europe depend on it.'
After months of trying to browbeat Ukraine into negotiating a peace deal that would have required them to permanently cede occupied territory to Russia, Trump is showing a new willingness to allow the war to continue. That's seemingly a response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's refusal to seriously engage in peace talks.
With Trump possibly rethinking his approach, Zelenskyy pushed the White House to maintain a sense of urgency and increase its pressure on Moscow.
'It's important to impose sanctions. We shouldn't... play by Putin's rules. It is important to impose sanctions and force Putin to agree to a ceasefire so that we can talk about ending the war,' Zelenskyy said.
He will have a chance to make another direct appeal to Trump next week when he is scheduled to attend the G-7 leader's summit in the Canadian Rockies.
Trump, during a meeting last week with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, expressed hesitation about giving the Senate a green light to advance widely supported legislation to impose additional sanctions on Russia. Describing the proposal in its original form as 'very harsh' on Russia, the president has been privately skeptical about the effectiveness of sanctions and, for months, has believed taking a harder stance toward Putin would backfire.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
But with the Russian leader unwilling to make any substantive concessions toward a ceasefire while stepping up his bombings of Ukrainian cities, Trump appears to be shifting course away from his push for peace and tempering his hopes for a fast rapprochement with Putin.
In Wednesday's interview, Zelenskyy said Trump remains the key figure who can bring the war to an end and urged the president to allow the sanctions bill to move forward.
'The strength of the sanctions, how strong the sanctions package will be, depends on him,' Zelenskyy said. 'The speed with which decisions are made depends on him; we don't see any resistance from the senators, for example. On the contrary, the majority is in favor.'
Trump, during the meeting with Merz, said the timeline for when he'll have to toughen up with Putin is 'in my head' — a statement that Zelenskyy said gave him hope that the stronger pressure he's asking for from the U.S. will eventually come.
'I very much hope that President Trump will stick to it,' Zelenskyy said. 'It's not even about the fact that he promised during the election campaign that he would end the war. That's not the point. It's more that he is a certain person — and let's also consider his age — and I think it's important for him, I hope it's important for him to end the war. He has spoken about it very often, he has repeated many times that he will end the killing.'
Zelenskyy also spoke about Operation Spider Web, the clandestine and ultimately successful endeavor to sneak drones into Russia that earlier this month succeeded in taking out roughly a third of Putin's long-range bomber fleet.
Trump, whose aides said he did not get a heads up about the attack, expressed only mild frustration over the attack and stated that Putin, in a call last week, told him that he planned to retaliate soon.
The attack, Zelenskyy said, ushered the war into 'a new phase,' suggesting that Kyiv is also capable of escalation if the fledgling peace talks run aground.
'I think that both in the U.S. and everywhere else, we must do everything we can to end this war so that we do not have further phases in this war.'