‘Ukraine isn’t Trump’s property’ How Ukrainian pundits reacted to Donald Trump’s moves during his first month back in office
Donald Trump’s return to the White House may have provoked cautious optimism among some in Ukraine one month ago, but since his inauguration, the U.S. president has aligned himself with the Kremlin with dizzying speed. In the past week alone, Trump has gone from holding a friendly phone call with Vladimir Putin to suggesting Ukraine started the war and calling Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator.” And while this about-face in America’s stance came as a shock for Ukraine, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Here’s how Ukrainian experts, activists, and commentators reacted to the ups and downs of Trump’s first month back in office.
Donald Trump came back to the White House intent on “making a deal” to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. Immediately after his inauguration on January 20, reports emerged that his team was working to arrange a call with Vladimir Putin, and the new U.S. president threatened even harsher sanctions if Moscow refused to reach a peace agreement.
In the days that followed, Trump revealed that he wanted Ukraine to give the U.S. rare earth metals in exchange for military aid — a proposal that President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed. “We’re open to working on all of this with our partners, who help us defend our land and drive back the enemy — with their weapons, their presence, and their sanctions. That’s absolutely fair,” Zelensky said.
It took Trump roughly three weeks to get Putin on the phone — and only then did he make a call to Zelensky. This sequence of events didn’t go unnoticed in Ukraine. “Trump has introduced a new reality in which Ukraine is rapidly losing its subjectivity,” wrote European Pravda journalist Oleh Pavliuk. Phoning Putin before Zelensky, he noted, signaled a clear break from the Biden administration’s “unshakeable” policy of consulting and coordinating its actions with Kyiv.
“Russia's diplomatic isolation from the West has been broken,” wrote journalist Leonid Shvets, in a column for Glavcom.ua. “Thus, it was recognized that the previous uncompromising position was misguided, that you can and should talk to Russia, [and] shake Putin’s hand.”
Political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko, meanwhile, advised everyone to remain calm. “With Putin and with Trump especially, tomorrow may be different than today, and even more so than yesterday,” he wrote on Facebook. “And what they say doesn’t mean that’s exactly what will happen.”
‘Neither Trump nor Vance care about Ukraine’s fate’
The annual Munich Security Conference kicked off just two days after Trump’s calls with Putin and Zelensky, and though the U.S. president initially claimed that American and Russian officials would meet in Munich — and that Ukraine was invited, too — this turned out not to be the case. (In fact, no Russian officials were accredited to attend.)
Instead, a meeting between Zelensky and Vice President J.D. Vance ended with the Ukrainian president “politely declining” to sign an agreement that would have granted the U.S. rights to half of Ukraine’s “future mineral reserves.”
Citing Ukrainian and American sources, European Pravda editor Sergiy Sydorenko reported that the meeting initially hinged on Zelensky signing the deal — but when the Ukrainian president refused, the U.S. delegation “quietly dropped” its demands. “This is how Ukraine got its first real insight into the negotiating style of the new U.S. administration,” he explained.
In Sydorenko’s view, the fact that the meeting went ahead speaks to the fact that Trump’s team isn’t as immovable as they might appear. Moreover, he argued, Vance voicing hopes for a “durable, lasting peace” seemed to align with Ukraine’s position — even if for cynical reasons. “In reality, a lasting peace in Ukraine is just as crucial for the White House as it is for Zelensky,” Sydorenko wrote.
[N]either Trump nor Vance care about Ukraine’s fate — that much is clear after the failed natural resources deal. But Trump has no interest in Russia launching another invasion during his presidency. This would be his peace deal, and he could no longer blame Biden or Obama for its failure. Vance, on the other hand, is even more invested in ensuring stability, because he is personally negotiating these deals.
Be that as it may, Vance’s controversial speech in Munich and the U.S. announcing plans to meet with a Russian delegation in Saudi Arabia without Ukrainian or European officials immediately set off alarm bells, once again. As journalist Kristina Berdynskykh put it: “We used to [be] afraid of Russian missiles and drones at night. And now every night brings new statements from the United States. And this is also worrying.”
Political analyst Mariia Zolkina, meanwhile, flagged the pace of the Trump administration’s push to conclude a deal with Russia as cause for concern. “I think we’re heading towards a Minsk III,” she warned, in a column for TSN. “And [this agreement] will be much worse than the previous ones. Not only because it’s a full-scale war, but also because now the U.S. may bet on a quick solution instead of a strategic one.”
‘A failure of Ukrainian diplomacy’
Kyiv’s exclusion from the negotiations in Riyadh drew immediate censure from Ukrainians, as did the ensuing announcements from the U.S. and Russian delegations that they had agreed to “begin working on a path” towards ending the war. Recalling Ukraine’s rejection of Russia’s demands at the start of the full-scale invasion, Zelensky reiterated that Kyiv would never give into the Kremlin’s ultimatums.
In a joint statement, Ukrainian human rights groups condemned “any agreements about Ukraine without its direct participation” as a violation of the country’s sovereignty and the fundamental principles of international law.
But former diplomat Kostyantyn Yeliseyev argued that the U.S.-Russia talks should be seen as “a failure of Ukrainian diplomacy.” Writing on Telegram, he questioned why U.S. officials didn’t set up a meeting in a similar format with the Ukrainian side.
If President Trump’s first call to Putin could still be perceived as a misunderstanding, then direct contacts with Putin’s team and the announcement of de facto rapprochement between Washington and Moscow are a verdict for Ukrainian diplomacy. Approaches must be changed urgently if we still want to get a seat at the negotiating table on equal terms, not secondary ones.
Trump’s comments in the hours after the talks in Riyadh only added insult to injury. Speaking at a press conference, the U.S. president falsely claimed that Ukraine had started the war with Russia and called for Kyiv to hold new elections to test Zelensky’s legitimacy.
“For Ukraine, launching an election campaign and not completing it in a legitimate way due to security disruptions or provocations is to lose everything,” warned activist Olha Aivazovska, from the election monitoring group OPORA.
In turn, Fesenko wrote that while Trump likely spoke out of frustration over Zelensky’s response to the proposed minerals deal and the U.S.-Russia talks, his comments seemingly reaffirmed that the new administration won’t be a reliable partner for Ukraine. “Trump repeats Russian propaganda narratives; he believes that the Russo-Ukrainian war could’ve been ended easily,” Fesenko explained. “This seems to be a deep-seated position of Trump’s that won’t disappear as a result of a change in his emotional state.”
‘Under Trump, this may mean nothing at all’
As it turns out, Trump’s attacks on Zelensky and Ukraine had only just begun. Writing on his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday, the U.S. president called Zelensky a “dictator” and accused him of profiting from the war. Naturally, Ukrainians were quick to push back against Trump’s latest shocking claims.
“Is Zelensky a dictator? This is strange to read, considering the two revolutions that Ukrainians have carried out in the past. In Ukraine, there’s freedom of speech, opposition. Cursing the government is a national pastime. Journalists can easily remove a minister. And this is during a war,” entrepreneur Aleksandr Konotopskyi wrote on Facebook.
In turn, political scientist Petro Oleshchuk argued that Trump’s maneuvering is just the latest example of the U.S. trying to “sell” Ukraine to Russia for its own gain. “[But there’s] one problem,” he added. “Ukraine isn’t Trump’s property. It wasn’t Biden’s, Obama’s, or the Bush family’s property. Although all of them could very well have thought otherwise.”
That said, others remain critical of how Zelensky is handling relations with the new U.S. administration. In a column for Ukrainska Pravda, for example, opposition MP Oleksiy Honcharenko appealed to the Ukrainian president to set aside his feelings and act pragmatically. “If Zelenskyy was unable to build relations with the Trump team internally, then he needs to start doing it publicly,” Honcharenko advised. “Trump doesn’t want to see us at the [negotiating] table? OK. Then we need to voice our basic principles and demands. And trust the Trump administration. It won’t be possible to sign a peace treaty without us anyway.”
The way European Pravda’s Pavliuk and Sydorenko see it, Trump’s “heated rhetoric” doesn’t preclude future negotiations. In fact, the American president has already said that he plans to “resurrect” the rare earth minerals deal with Ukraine. “Even when statements are coming from Washington that, in the standard diplomatic matrix, would leave no room for partnership, under Trump, this may mean nothing at all,” Pavliuk and Sydorenko wrote in a column on Thursday. “The U.S. president’s administration has already proven its unpredictability and capacity for sharp U-turns, and this feature is unlikely to change.”
Article by Eilish Hart