Ambush! A mugging in the Oval Office reveals the alliance’s deep split

The setting was familiar to millions watching television and online news streaming. Over the years, we have seen it many times — a US president and a foreign leader seated next to each other in the White House’s Oval Office discussing and resolving consequential global issues. Aides, reporters, boom microphones, television cameras and bright lights face the principal actors. However, there was one crucial difference between this particular meeting on Friday, 28 February and all the others that preceded it.

This time, the US president, the vice-president and a few forelock-tugging reporters carried out a vicious mugging of a visiting head of government from a heretofore friendly nation. Volodymyr Zelensky’s nation has been fighting off a massive Russian military assault over the past three years. Russia, under the leadership of its president, Vladimir Putin, has been trying to crush Ukraine since its assault began in 2022. In this most recent White House meeting, the US president was Donald Trump, his vice-president was JD Vance and the visitor was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky had come to Washington to settle the more contentious points of an agreement that — under pressure from the US — would set up mechanisms for the joint exploitation of Ukrainian natural resources, especially rare earth elements crucial for the manufacture of many hi-tech components. This Oval Office meeting before the media and others was supposed to be the prelude to a private meeting where the leaders would sort out the remaining issues in the agreement. That, in turn, would have fed into a formal media conference.

Instead, it turned into a nasty, public mugging. Zelensky was upbraided for not wearing a suit. (He has been wearing a semi-military outfit since the invasion began, and any number of Middle East visitors and even Winston Churchill have, over the years, eschewed business suits for traditional or military-style garb. So too has Elon Musk, with his odd mix of teenage fashion and Maga paraphernalia.)

Zelensky was verbally pummelled for failing to say, “thank you, m’lord” to Trump, or effectively kissing his ring in gratitude for the weapons and economic support. This would have been despite the fact that most of that military and economic support came during Trump’s predecessor’s tenure in office, and the new vice-president, while still a senator, had spoken out against any such aid. Whenever Zelensky attempted to correct the record on the facts of US aid or even key dates in the crisis such as the 2014 seizure of Crimea by Russia, he was verbally smacked down by an overeager JD Vance, desperate to prove his fealty to the president.

Zelensky was repeatedly reprimanded — almost as if he was a truculent schoolboy — for being reluctant to trust Putin’s word in any potential ceasefire or agreement, absent rigorous international security guarantees. According to the Americans, Zelensky had had the temerity to assert that without rigorous guarantees, Russia might only postpone further military efforts. Given that the Russians had ignored several previous ceasefires, the threat remained real, according to the Ukrainian leader. Statements by Trump that his goal in the conflict was “peace” without a sense of what that peace should entail, means there is a real gap between Zelensky and Trump’s ideas of what comes next.

Told he was unwilling to work towards peace even as he was insistent on using further US support to continue the war, there was no minerals agreement between the parties, no signing of a memorandum of that agreement, and no post-agreement media conference to tout that agreement. Zelensky was then booted out of the White House and effectively told, “Begone, you, until you come back, bowing, hat in hand, with an apologetic look on your face, begging for those US-dictated terms of capitulation to end the war on terms acceptable to Moscow.”

It is possible Zelensky’s efforts would have been better served with the slower pace of consecutive interpreting of the meeting, instead of his attempts to use his careful English for this engagement with a US president eager for a fight and a vice-president keen to demonstrate his cojones to his boss. That might have made the conversation more deliberate, putting Zelensky on a more equal linguistic footing and restraining the dismissive wave directed at the Ukrainian president. Of course, that pace might have given Trump and Vance more time to position attacks on Zelensky, so who knows for sure.

Unprecedented

It is hard to recall any meeting with such ill-will being publicly demonstrated by a US president at a foreign visitor — ever. Yes, White House meetings with foreign leaders can be contentious, even angry, as was the case between Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin and — sometimes — between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. But by the time the principals were in front of the media, beyond an occasional frown, things were publicly polite, just like adults should behave.

Throughout this catastrophe of diplomacy, viewers of the encounter on television could see in the audience the Ukrainian ambassador to the US sitting with her head in her hands in dismay and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ashen-faced as the meeting went further and further off the rails. While there was no official Russian presence in that meeting, the shade of Putin was in the air, almost as if Trump was doing his best to offer fealty to his liege lord with his criticisms of the Ukrainian visitor. After the meeting, the Russians were publicly jubilant, with one official wondering aloud how Trump had been able to refrain himself from smacking his visitor. The meeting and its aftermath were a train wreck of epic proportions.

While there has been no immediate announcement of the cessation of further US aid to Ukraine and there is still some funding that has been appropriated and obligated for support to Ukraine, there is reason to be concerned that the aid pipeline may soon be turned off. That clearly worries Ukrainian leaders, whose military efforts have been significantly supported by US aid.

By comparison, over the weekend Zelensky had a warm meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and a meeting with King Charles. Moreover, the Ukrainian president has met a gaggle of European leaders who have voiced firm support for Ukraine’s cause. As a group, they will now busy themselves trying to work out how to ratchet up their assistance to Zelensky’s beleaguered nation, as well as mould the shape and substance of security guarantees for Ukraine.

They have a second crucial task: to rebuild fragmenting ties between the US and its major European allies, especially after hearing jarring words from the US president that the US is not aligned with anyone. Zelensky, meanwhile, has messaged that he is still hoping for essential support from the US in his nation’s struggle against an invader.

In all of this, among US domestic politicians, most Republicans have voiced support for Trump’s behaviour, even as Democrats and the majority of major media commentators have said how appalled they are at the way the Americans comported themselves on Friday and how they are cutting Ukraine adrift.

Looking forward, it will be very important to see how this major shift in US policy plays in Beijing (and Taipei) as Chinese leaders contemplate how the US might react to an overt move against Taiwan during the Trump administration. Similarly, would this deliberate move away from support of Ukraine have an impact on Trump’s heretofore full-on support of Israel in how it deals with Iran and Hezbollah — as well as the continuing conflict in Gaza?

Americans and the rest of the world will probably get an inkling of all of this in the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress on 4 March, Tuesday night. Although technically not a State of the Union speech, effectively it will offer clarifications on Trump’s foreign policy views, as well as how he plans to continue the major cuts in staffing and programmes being engineered (or foisted) by Musk and his band to magically reach a level of $2-trillion worth of savings. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues. DM