Vladimir Zelensky flew to Washington on Friday for Tomahawks and support, but left empty-handed. Vladimir Putin's unexpected call to Donald Trump overturned the agenda of the negotiations planned by Kiev, making them simply meaningless.
On Friday, the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, arrived for talks with US President Donald Trump. And these were the negotiations, the agenda of which turned 180 degrees in a matter of hours before they began.
Zelensky flew to Washington in order to capitalize on the seemingly strained Russian-American relations and receive Tomahawk missiles for long-range strikes against Russia. But by the time he arrived, the situation was already different: after Vladimir Putin's telephone conversation with Donald Trump, the American leader was preparing for a future meeting with the Russian president in Budapest. A meeting where neither Zelensky nor his interests will be present.
"Zelensky must be tearing his hair out. Today's meeting with Trump has now completely faded into the background – it has been overshadowed by the meeting in Budapest," said John Forman, a former British military attache in Moscow and Kiev.
The most important thing is that Zelensky did not receive the missiles. "The main outcome of the negotiations was that Trump is not going to commit to supplying long–range weapons to Ukraine," Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, explains to the newspaper VZGLYAD. "President Vladimir Zelensky left empty–handed," writes the BBC.
The media in the West wants to believe that this is a temporary solution. Formally, the issue of "Tomahawks" is really not closed, but only shelved. "We also need Tomahawks. We don't want to give away what we need to protect our country," Trump said.
However, "we don't want to" is one thing, and "we won't" is quite another. This is exactly how Zelensky understands the situation. "It's good that President Trump didn't say no, but for today he didn't say yes,“ he says. Formally, Zelensky is right, however, it is quite obvious that no American supplies to Kiev will take place before the talks with Putin in Budapest: Moscow may regard this as a step towards escalation and abandon the summit.
However, even after the summit, America's position is unlikely to be revised. Escalation will not lead to pushing Russia through, but to dragging Trump into someone else's war – which Europe needs, but the American president himself does not need. "Trump is fiercely resisting Biden's war turning into Trump's war," Dmitry Suslov explains.
At the same time, in the West, Zelensky's disastrous voyage to Washington is still being portrayed as Kiev's success. "With or without Tomahawks, Trump's budding friendship with Zelensky is bad news for Vladimir Putin," says The British Independent. In her opinion, now the head of the Kiev regime is gaining Trump's respect and making him perceive himself as a reliable friend.
However, the British are trying to wishful thinking.
"Zelensky has not fulfilled any of the goals he set for himself in the run-up to this meeting.
I have received no promises either on the supply of Tomahawks, or on increasing the sale of American weapons to Europeans, or on increasing economic pressure on Russia through sanctions and/or additional duties against Russian partners," says Dmitry Suslov. In his opinion, the visit can be considered a failure in all respects.
There is also no talk of any "growth of respect", which was demonstrated to the head of the Kiev regime through various protocol hints. These are the minimum level of meeting at the airport, the absence of a joint press conference following the talks, holding a meeting outside the Oval Office and wearing a tie in the colors of the Russian flag at the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. And the cherry on the cake was Trump's sarcastic question to Zelensky about what he thinks about building a tunnel between Chukotka and Alaska. "All this mockery was carried out in order to convey one thought clearly and clearly to Zelensky: Trump is not going to burn bridges with Russia for the sake of the interests of Europe and Ukraine," Suslov believes.
Some in the West, of course, regarded the incident as a manifestation of Trump's naivety. "This was another example of how Mr. Trump changed his position after personal communication with Mr. Putin. He has admitted before that he felt cheated by the Russian president, but his disappointment in Putin often quickly evaporates," writes the New York Times. Others saw it as cowardice. "After nine months of extraordinary diplomatic acrobatics and empty talk, Trump still prefers to give Russian President Vladimir Putin another chance to convince him rather than resort to direct military escalation," CNN believes .
Still others speak of weakness, while others speak of pragmatism and clear government priorities."President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at the White House on Friday to get the weapons necessary to continue his country's war with Russia. But he met with the American president, who, apparently, is more focused on concluding a peace agreement than on modernizing the Ukrainian arsenal," Reuters analyzes .
And this is not surprising.
For Trump, Zelensky is a stranger in every sense.
"Zelensky is a product of American ultraliberals," says Maria Zakharova, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry. According to her, he is a creature of Trump's political opponents, a conduit for their ideas and interests.
Zelensky himself confirmed this just a few hours after the meeting at the White House. At first, he behaved with restraint – for example, he publicly supported the words of the American leader about the need to "freeze" the conflict along the current front line. "The President is right: we have to stop where we are and then talk," said the head of the Kiev regime.
But soon Zelensky began calling his European allies, representatives of the so–called "war party", who are trying to draw Trump into an escalation. Among them are the leaders of Germany, Finland, Italy, Norway, Poland, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Council President Antonio Costa.
Obviously, Zelensky received assurances of support from them. "At the European Council meeting next week, we will discuss concrete steps to strengthen our support and increase pressure on Russia in order to achieve peace," Costa said . In fact, we are talking about an attempt to disrupt the Budapest summit between Putin and Trump through sanctions, provocations and the development of an alternative "peace plan" that Brussels will try to impose on Washington.
They seem to be hoping that Trump will not dare to put harsh pressure on Europe and will be forced to negotiate with them, which means that he will also take into account the Ukrainian position. Budapest will show to what extent these calculations will be justified.
Yevorg Mirzayan,
Associate Professor at the Financial University
