Ukraine may pay a heavy price for Zelensky’s stupidity – Firstpost

It took the Second World War to change the course of history. It took the fall of the USSR and demolition of the Berlin Wall to serve the next inflection point. The bar is considerably lower in the age of social media. Bickering heads of states in a ‘live’ televised showdown, amplified on X, is the totem of our times, where the course of history may turn on empty grandstanding.

There was Volodymyr Zelensky, the Justin Trudeau of Ukraine in war fatigues at the Oval Office. He appeared more interested in playing to the gallery than signing a critical deal with the United States that may keep his country afloat. On the other side were the American president and the vice president, leading an America in retreat, eager to close the rare earths deal and push the deadly conflict towards an early denouement.

All Zelensky needed to do was keep calm, sign the draft agreement for which painstaking negotiations have already been met, and avoid getting into a slanging match with Trump in full glare of American media. The day before Zelensky landed in Washington DC, Trump’s treasury secretary Scott Bessent went on record that the Ukrainian president’s visit “is mostly ceremonial and a ‘deal is done’ for American businesses to take interest in Ukrainian energy and resource extraction.”

So, what went wrong?

A lot, apparently. To begin, Trump and Zelensky were talking about two different deals.

The agreement on strategic minerals, rare earths, hydrocarbons and infrastructure assets, that involves creation of a jointly managed “Reconstruction Investment Fund” to which Ukraine is mandated to contribute half of the revenues of future monetization of state-owned natural resources, was way more than just a deal on paper.

While lithium deposits at the undeveloped site in central Ukraine may take at least till 2029 to reach production stage (Trump’s term ends in 2028) according to the most optimistic estimates, the deal’s real value lay in its geopolitical and geoeconomic promise.

To Trump, the revenue that may be generated from the deal was a form of payback for the money that the US has already spent on Ukraine in the form of financial aid, military equipment and arsenal to help it tackle Russian aggression. He reckons that Zelensky has been taking the US for a merry ride, and any future payment by American taxpayers must be returned in some form.

In Trump’s mind, therefore, Ukraine has very little leverage over America even if it signs the deal. It is a transactional arrangement expected to generate revenues that could help America recover some of the dues. Full stop.

To Zelensky, the minerals deal was a compromise that he was willing to make but only in lieu of firm security guarantees from the US. Before heading to Washington, he made it clear that the proposed agreement was just a “framework”, and the draft must have “a sentence on security guarantees for Ukraine, and it’s important that it’s there.”

Those who have watched the full 49-minute press briefing at the Oval Office between Zelensky, Trump and Vance would know that from the very outset, the Ukrainian president kept trying to push the boundaries of the agreement with maximalist rhetoric in full public glare and eke out from Trump an iron-clad assurance on Ukraine’s security going above and beyond that which has been negotiated in the draft agreement.

This was, by any account, terrible diplomacy. Photo-ops of the kind that the three leaders were presumably engaging in are routine business that entails perfunctory rhetoric. Negotiations could be tough and demanding, but only when the doors are closed.

This act of renegotiation before the cameras was a risky manouvre with a mercurial American president who had been surprisingly calm and composed for the first 40 minutes of the interaction. Zelensky dismissed the notion of any ceasefire sans security guarantees and appeared unimpressed with the Trump administration’s stress on diplomacy to end the war. Trump read Zelensky’s obduracy as disrespect and the dismissal of the ongoing peace process, in which Trump has taken an active interest, as a personal insult.

As India’s former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao laid out on X, “There was no need for him (Zelensky) to ventilate his views on Russia, and President Putin when the world knows where Ukraine stands on these issues and how it has been affected. He should’ve said that he was in Washington to help forge an end to the conflict, to bring peace to the people of Ukraine, and that the active involvement and support of the United States in this process was critical, was crucial, was fundamental and that Ukraine would always be grateful for that. Behind closed doors, diplomacy can be transacted in a much more frank and candid way, and Ukraine could have laid out its position with unvarnished clarity before the Americans.”

Worth noting that even after the Oval Office showdown, Zelensky is doubling and even tripling down on his position that he won’t give diplomacy a chance until and unless a security guarantee for Ukraine is cast in stone.

In a series of posts on X, Zelensky wrote “we are ready to sign the minerals agreement, and it will be the first step toward security guarantees. But it’s not enough, and we need more than just that. A ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine. We’ve been fighting for three years, and Ukrainian people need to know that America is on our side.”

For good measure, lest he be misunderstood, he clarified that “the deal on minerals is just a first step toward security guarantees and getting closer to peace.”

As I have stated above, this is radically different interpretation of the minerals deal than the one Trump thinks he is signing. The American president has been very clear that his country won’t be drawn into an exclusive undertaking to provide security to Ukraine, which he thinks is the preserve of the Europeans.

New York Times accessed
the latest draft of the deal that was about to be signed by the leaders, and crucially, it “did not signal any specific US commitment to safeguarding Ukraine’s security.” The only sentence Ukrainian negotiators were successful in inserting was that the United States “supports Ukraine’s effort to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace” – a phrase that was absent in previous drafts. The implication is that Europe will pick up the tab.

Important to understand here that this as much as Trump administration is willing to go. “I’m not going to provide security guarantees beyond very much,” the American president reportedly said during his first cabinet meeting Wednesday. “We’re going to have Europe do that.”

Trump is tired of the war, sees no reason why he should be drawn into another unending, forever commitment that involves pumping of American money and arms into a conflict from where he sees no tangible benefits, and cannot understand why he, or the American citizens are expected to show strategic altruism in a losing cause to help keep afloat a leader whom he despises, and who is bent on continuing a war that he dislikes.

Moreover, as Trump told Zelensky, he is “gambling with World War 3”. This isn’t mere rhetoric. For America to provide an exclusive security guarantee en route to a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia – that Zelensky is insisting on – is a commitment that de facto mimics Article 5 of NATO and may result in catastrophic consequences.

Bear in mind that Zelensky, even during the ill-fated press briefing, kept insisting that “there can be no compromises with killer Putin on Ukrainian territory.” In other words, he still hopes to wrest back the land Ukraine has lost.

What much of the post-debacle commentary has missed out on is that Trump, while refusing to be drawn directly into the war, does not appear to be dismissive of deterrence. For him, the minerals deal that involves a firm American economic commitment, is tantamount to providing Ukraine with insurance against further Russian aggression because he reckons that Putin – with whom he hopes to strike a compact – won’t make the mistake of attacking Americans.

To quote Trump, “We’re going to be working over there. We’ll be on the land, and you know, that way it’s this sort of automatic security,” he said Wednesday, “because nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there.”

Under these
circumstances, Zelensky’s belligerence appears less and less reasonable. His rhetoric, tactics and body language during the incendiary bilateral showed a leader drunk on liberal Kool-Aid who is either ignorant of, or has completely failed to judge the tectonic shift in American politics.

🧵Here’s what the media WILL NOT show you.

Many in the media are accusing Trump & @JDVance of attacking Zelenskyy.

What they don’t show you is how hard President Trump tried to keep the meeting going, and how hard Zelenskyy tried to sabotage it. See for yourself 🧵⬇️ pic.twitter.com/NsQj1sBuzf

— Yitz Friedman (@friedman_yitz) March 2, 2025

Zelensky’s wardrobe choice, that elicited a sarcastic remark from Trump, gave an early indication of his diplomatic naivete. Putting aside the performative outrage and moral screeching, that European leaders have specialised on, Zelensky was entering into tough negotiations with a volatile, yet popular POTUS who holds a grudge against the Ukrainian leader. Trump hasn’t forgotten that Zelensky appeared at a Democratic event in Pennsylvania ahead of the hotly contested presidential polls last year and met a bunch of Democratic leaders just ahead of the Oval Office appointment Friday.

A formal attire would have carried a signal that he is amenable to change. Instead, the war fatigues reinforced the impression that Zelensky will not be “bullied into submission” and cares little about the sensibilities of his hosts – Ukraine’s biggest benefactors. For Trump, who likes to be in control and revels in his role as the ‘dealmaker’, it was a sign of disrespect.

And yet the meeting started off well until Zelensky started lecturing Trump and Vance on how ceasefires won’t work, that bringing Putin for discussion is futile unless explicit guarantees are placed on the table, and until he entered into a hot exchange with vice-president Vance on the futility of diplomacy. It wasn’t until he mocked Trump’s comments about “nice ocean” that Trump erupted, and things went out of control.

The Ukrainian president showed a lack of tactical nous, appeared to have been badly briefed and evidently did not do his homework. His frequent rolling of eyes and crossing of arms, signifying defiance, and a very public antagonistic attitude towards American leaders who feel they owe nothing to Ukraine, will go down in history as a study in hubris.

For European leaders, busy
copy-pasting their support, Zelensky was the unqualified hero. Americans vehemently disagree. Around
62% Americans found Zelensky’s behaviour offensive. And the debacle has convinced more Americans that their country is helping Ukraine too much—up from 7% to 41%.
Trust in Zelensky fell from 72% to under 48%.

It doesn’t matter what Europeans claim, Ukraine cannot sustain its defence against Russia without American help. This is a hard fact that no amount of spin can overcome. Zelensky needed to sign the deal, develop better rapport with Trump and his deputy and ease into negotiations. Trump had already been giving signals about continuing with military aid.

All that Zelensky succeeded to do is
put the minerals deal in jeopardy, that may lead to Trump halting all military aid to Ukraine.

Regardless of the European virtue-signalling, this war has only three possible ends. America steps in on behalf of Ukraine and engages in a direct military confrontation with Russia, that possesses the world’s largest military arsenal and an autocratic leader who has little to lose; America stays away and allows Ukraine to be swallowed; or a peace deal is hammered out with concessions from both sides. Zelensky just blew the third option.

With his maximalist rhetoric, Zelensky, like Major Sergius Saranoff in Shaw’s Arms and the Man, forgot the realities of war. Pampered for so long by European leaders (and even Biden who had admonished him in private for
ingratitude), rockstar Zelensky, unaccustomed to public admonitions, has almost buried Ukraine’s survival prospects with his vanity.

Trump may think that he is doing Ukraine a favour, in Zelensky’s book, it is he who is defending the “free world” against Russian aggression and therefore it is America’s solemn duty to keep supplying him with funds and arms as long as it takes. This sense of narcissism, made worse by unflinching western support, has instilled in Zelensky such a sense of entitlement that the Ukrainian president thought he is morally insulated against hard bargains that lie ahead.

Ukraine may pay the price for his stupidity.

The writer is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost. He tweets as @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.