Trump Administration Live Updates: Break Between U.S. and Ukraine Reverberates
“President Trump’s heated Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky, where Trump criticized Ukraine and suggested a quick end to the war, has alarmed European leaders and Ukrainians alike. While Zelensky attempted to reassure his citizens and appeal to the U.S., the rift underscores Trump’s shift away from traditional allies and potential concessions to Russia. This meeting highlights the uncertainty surrounding U.S. support for Ukraine under a potential second Trump presidency.
European leaders lined up to support Ukraine after the blowup between its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and President Trump. Mr. Zelensky sought to appeal to the U.S. with expressions of gratitude.
Pinned
A day after President Trump blasted Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a heated Oval Office meeting on Friday, leaders in Europe were assessing what the rift would mean for their own security, and Mr. Zelensky reassured his own people that they were not alone in the fight against Russia.
The blowup in the meeting between the two leaders was the latest sign that Mr. Trump is pivoting American foreign policy away from traditional allies like Ukraine and Europe. It also illustrated his seriousness about his plans to quickly end the war in Ukraine, which could result in a deal that empowers Russia.
For months leading into the American elections last fall, the prospect of a second Trump presidency deepened uncertainty among Ukrainians over how enduring American support would prove in a war threatening their national survival.
After President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous meeting with President Trump in the White House on Friday, many Ukrainians were moving toward a conclusion that seemed perfectly clear: Mr. Trump has chosen a side, and it is not Ukraine’s.
News Analysis
President Trump says he wants a quick cease-fire in Ukraine. But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appears to be in no rush, and the blowup on Friday between Mr. Trump and Ukraine’s president may give Russia’s leader the kind of ammunition he needs to prolong the fight.
With the American alliance with Ukraine suffering a dramatic, public rupture, Mr. Putin now seems even more likely to hold out for a deal on his terms — and he could even be tempted to expand his push on the battlefield.
A day after a disastrous meeting at the White House in which President Trump publicly slammed President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader sought on Saturday to reassure his war-weary citizens that they were not alone in their fight against Russia, even as he also tried to appeal to the United States and its leaders with statements of gratitude.
“Our relationship with the American President is more than just two leaders; it’s a historic and solid bond between our peoples,” he wrote in one of a flurry of postson social media. “That’s why I always begin with words of gratitude from our nation to the American nation.”
Congressional Republicans, egged on by Elon Musk and other top allies of President Trump, are escalating calls to remove federal judges who stand in the way of administration efforts to overhaul the government.
The outcry is threatening yet another assault on the constitutional guardrails that constrain the executive branch.
The night before Speaker Mike Johnson defied the hard-right wing of his party and brought up a bill to send more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, he spent a mostly sleepless night in a luxury hotel suite overlooking the Potomac River, bracing for a mutiny that would end his speakership.
“He was in turmoil,” his wife, Kelly Johnson, recalled of that night last spring, in an interview conducted last fall. “We assumed we were done. I was saying, ‘Well, it’s been great. It’s been a nice, but short little ride.’ We thought we were going home.”
In 2018, Democrats won back the House, flipping 41 seats including in conservative-leaning places like the suburbs of Utah and Oklahoma by focusing narrowly on a single issue: Republican efforts to overturn a popular health care program, the Affordable Care Act.
Now, as Republicans push a budget resolution through Congress that will almost certainly require some kind of cuts to Medicaid to finance a huge tax reduction, Democrats see an opening to use the same strategy.
It went well enough for the first 23 minutes, a polite if stiff meeting between an American president and a foreign leader. Then their differences started to be aired, unmistakably though not too contentiously. Then after 39 minutes, it really came off the rails.
The verbal brawl in the Oval Office on Friday between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine startled Washington, unnerved Europe, outraged Kyiv and delighted Moscow. By the end, the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington had her head in her hands in dismay.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine entered the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday knowing that the flow of weapons and military hardware from the United States to his country had essentially stopped.
By the time he left, after a televised argument between the two leaders, the situation appeared even more dire.
One of the most surreal moments of Friday’s Oval Office showdown between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine came at the very end.
After all the shouting and the saber-rattling and the lecturing and the pleading and the politicking had ceased, the American president shifted a little in his seat and shared an observation.
Liudmyla Shestakova has lost a lot to this war — her son, and his wife, who died together on the front lines. But she’s a realist, like many in this mining region in central Ukraine. And ever since President Trump suggested it, she has thought that her country should sign a proposed deal that would give America some profits from mining in Ukraine.
Ms. Shestakova, 65, who works with an environmental group called Flora in the city of Kropyvnytskyi, had hoped a deal between the U.S. and Ukraine on critical minerals could bring much-needed investment to the region.“
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