Trump on best behavior in meetings with Zelensky and European leaders

It was back to black for Volodymyr Zelensky. After the Trump White House asked whether he was going to wear a suit for his Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainian President showed up in a dark military-style jacket, pleasing his hosts to no end. Even Brian Glenn, boyfriend of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and reporter for Real America’s Voice, who had dissed Zelensky in February, commended him on his habiliments, declaring “you look fabulous in that suit.” Zelensky was pleased. So was Trump. 

In fact, Trump was on his best behavior. After ranting earlier in the morning that he didn’t need all the experts to tell him what to think and that Ukraine should essentially prostrate itself before Russia, he avoided any verbal fisticuffs with Zelensky or talk about exiting NATO. Instead, Trump breathed optimism about where the negotiations, which he hopes will secure him a coveted Nobel Peace Prize, were headed. “I think it’s going to be when, not if,” Trump said about a trilateral meeting between him, Putin and Zelensky.  

He may not have rolled out a red carpet for Zelensky when he arrived in Washington, as he did for Putin in Alaska, but he treated him with unwonted respect. According to Trump, “I have a feeling you and President Putin are going to work something out. Ultimately, this is a decision that can only be made by President Zelensky and by the people of Ukraine working also together in agreement with President Putin. And I just think that very good things are going to come of it.” 

If the meeting with European leaders that took place later in the afternoon was anything to go by, Trump’s eupeptic push for a peace deal is not meeting with overt resistance. Quite the contrary. Zelensky indicated that territorial concessions would be discussed should he meet Putin. It was clever of Zelensky to put the onus back on Putin rather than rejecting out-of-hand the prospect of land swaps. “If we played this well, we could end this, and we have to end it,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said. Indeed, he called Trump’s offer of security guarantees for Ukraine a “breakthrough.” 

What those guarantees would look like remains unclear. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who appears to have established a good working relationship with Trump, indicated that it was imperative to provide “Article 5-like guarantees” to Ukraine. What this will amount to is an open question – Germany announced today that it was already overstretched with its stationing of a Bundeswehr brigade in Lithuania and that it is unlikely to put any boots on the ground in Ukraine. 

But the biggest obstacle to a peace deal, of course, is whether Putin even wants one. “President Putin wants to find an answer, too” Trump said. Does he? So far, as he launches fresh fusillades of missiles and drones at Ukraine, the Russian tyrant appears to believe that he has more to benefit from continuing rather than halting the war that he, and he alone, launched in February 2022. For all the bonhomie that existed between him and Trump in Alaska, it may be replaced by a more adversarial relationship in coming weeks should Putin maintain his obduracy about reaching an actual deal.