Hours before an explosive blowup in the Oval Office between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump and his team felt they had found a path forward to match the president’s urgency to end the war with the Ukrainians’ need for continued security assistance.
The East Room of the White House had been decorated in greenery and four pairs of American and Ukrainian flags, set up for the leaders to sign a minerals deal that national security adviser Michael Waltz called “critical” for the United States. Elsewhere, White House staff were preparing a celebratory lunch of rosemary roasted chicken and crème brûlée, with the menu laid out on stationery bearing closely intertwined American and Ukrainian flags.
White House officials were expecting a positive meeting and said they had little reason to anticipate animosity. Both sides were satisfied with the minerals deal, hoping it might recalibrate the relationship between the two nations, Ukrainian and U.S. officials said, speaking like others on condition of anonymity to discuss relations at a tense time. Trump himself was in an upbeat mood the night before the meeting, according to those who had spoken with him.
But what unfolded Friday afternoon was not the coda that was expected on a week that featured relatively chummy and flattery-filled visits from two other transatlantic leaders who sought to shore up Trump’s support for Kyiv on the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
Instead, the ensuing public castigation of Zelensky by Trump and Vice President JD Vance laid bare the deepening rift between Europe and the Trump administration and Republican Party, jeopardizing U.S. aid for Ukraine, the end of war in Europe, and the prospect of a renewed relationship between the two leaders.
Beneath the surface, feelings of hopeful progress were the matchsticks that fueled the explosive meeting: long-standing Republican gripes over a perceived lack of respect by Zelensky and the short-term memory of a meeting in Munich last month between Zelensky, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Zelensky’s popularity within the Republican Party has spiraled since 2023, with Vance emerging as one of the loudest voices advocating to cut off U.S. funding to what he’s called a “never-ending war.” Trump last month called Zelensky “a dictator” who wanted to “to keep the gravy train going” at the expense of the United States, and falsely claimed that Ukraine had started the war. But GOP praise for Trump and Vance’s attack on the Ukrainian leader over the weekend was the most united front against the beleaguered country to date.
The visit also came as the United States sided with Russia and against Ukraine and Europe at the United Nations, voting with other Moscow-aligned countries against a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory. Earlier in the week, French and British leaders avoided acrimony during White House visits and offered their troops on Ukrainian soil to guarantee a peace deal. Trump had spoken by phone Thursday with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who emphasized that any deal would need to be “enduring,” according to NATO.
Friday marked Zelensky’s fifth visit to the White House, and started like many of the others. His black SUV went through the White House gates, with service members lining the walkway with 58 flags – 56 to mark all the states and territories, along with an American flag and a Ukrainian flag.
The first sign of problems to come appeared shortly thereafter: After Zelensky got out of his car in his traditional wartime fatigues, Trump looked at reporters and said, “He’s all dressed up today.”
It reflected a long-standing complaint that some conservatives have had about the Ukrainian leader, and was resurrected in the Oval Office when Brian Glenn, a correspondent at Real America’s Voice and the partner of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), asked Zelensky, “Why don’t you wear a suit? You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit.”
There was tension in the room as the leaders sat down with each other, a senior Trump administration official said. But they still didn’t expect what would happen next, the official said. Trump and Vance both eventually raised their voices to the Ukrainian president, and Zelensky urged them to lower their voices, which only continued in the heated exchange.
Zelensky at one point suggested that he would not accept a ceasefire without a security guarantee, reporters repeatedly pressed Trump on whether the United States would offer any security assurances and the meeting began to unravel when Zelensky chided Vance for commenting on the war without having visited the country.
Vance jumped on Zelensky’s remark, responding that he knows “what happens is you bring people on a propaganda tour, Mr. President.”
Vance had sat through two bilateral Oval Office press gaggles earlier in the week with little interjection, speaking up only when Trump called on him to answer a reporter’s question Thursday during British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit.
But fresh in Vance’s mind was a meeting only two weeks earlier in Munich, where he, Rubio and Zelensky – before aides and cameras joined them – had a serious conversation about signing the minerals deal, according to administration officials. The day after the meeting, however, Zelensky said he couldn’t sign a deal that wasn’t connected to security guarantees.
Rubio later said in an interview that Zelensky had assured Vance and himself that he wanted “to do this deal” and only needed legislative approval to get it done, and that Zelensky’s later public comments left the Americans “upset” – a sentiment that loomed over Friday’s Oval Office talks, even as the Trump administration was preparing to make the deal happen.
Vance’s in-the-moment decision to criticize Zelensky for not being “respectful” and questioning Trump’s diplomatic strategy changed the tone of the meeting and primed Trump to also let loose on the Ukrainian president.
“Do you think it’s respectful to come into the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?” Vance queried Zelensky.
Seconds later, Trump, who had appeared to be intently listening to Vance’s scolding of Zelensky, chimed in with his own rebuke: “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel,” he interrupted.
Trump and Vance later spoke about the interaction, and Vance’s decision to chime in, and Trump indicated that he approved of the vice president’s comments, according to a White House official.
“They both felt exactly the same way about the circumstances, that Zelensky was being inappropriate,” the official said, and that “it was not right for him to be litigating” the U.S. strategy with Russia “in front of the press.”
Vance had said as much to Zelensky in front of the cameras. Trump, for his part, speculated that their exchange would be ratings gold.
“This is going to be great television,” Trump declared. “I will say that.”
Once the press was shown out of the Oval Office, so were Zelensky and his delegation. They waited elsewhere in the West Wing as Trump consulted with his advisers about what to do next.
We “pretty much unanimously advised the president that after that insult in the Oval Office, we just do not see how that could move forward, that any further engagement would only go backward from this moment on,” Waltz told “Fox News Saturday.”
It fell to him and Rubio – both of them past defenders of Ukraine and Zelensky – to bring the news to the Ukrainians. Waltz said that Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova was “practically in tears” as the delegation sat waiting, but that Zelensky was still argumentative.
Waltz said that he told Zelensky, “Look, Mr. President, time is not on your side here. Time is not on your side on the battlefield. Time is not on your side in terms of the world situation and most importantly, U.S. aid and the taxpayers, tolerance is not unlimited.”
The national security adviser said that Zelensky “has not gotten the memo that this is a new sheriff in town.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), who just last year rebuked Vance’s position on Ukraine and urged the then-senator to take a trip to the war-torn country before taking a position, said during a Fox News interview on Friday after the spat that Zelensky would have to “fundamentally change or go.” But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was the rare GOP official who denounced Trump in a post on X for “walking away from our allies and embracing Putin, a threat to democracy and U.S. values around the world.”
Zelensky traveled to London on Saturday to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who convened a summit Sunday with other European leaders who have rallied behind the Ukrainian leader.
On Saturday, Rutte, the NATO secretary general, who is expected to attend the summit, described the meeting as “unfortunate,” but said he made clear to Zelensky that it was important to “find a way to restore his relationship” with Trump and others in the administration. Pressed in a BBC interview on whether allies could replace U.S. aid for Ukraine, Rutte demurred.
“It is crucial that we stay all in this together,” he said. “We have to move beyond what happened.”
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Ellen Francis contributed to this report.