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(Semi) Professional Observations on the Oval Office Debacle
I say semi-professional observations because I have served as a Russian-English-Russian interpreter at corporate, academic, and non-profit events. And when I lived in Kazakhstan, I participated in and observed similar international meetings, although at a much lower level. So here are my thoughts.
The meeting should never have happened. The sides had not even agreed on a framework. Zelensky wanted a security guarantee, but Trump was only willing to hint that it might be possible to give one. The meeting should have been downgraded to a deputies-level meeting or postponed until the sides had agreed on a framework.
Both sides needed interpreters. Zelensky speaks good English, but he failed to communicate his key point several times because of his imperfect English. And Zelensky did not always understand the nuances of Trump’s and Vance’s points. It is the responsibility of each party to use an interpreter if needed to communicate clearly to the other side. An intepreter would have slowed the exchanges down, giving the parties more time to think and perhaps a few crucial seconds to calm down before making a provocative response.
Zelensky should have worn a suit. He has pledged not to wear a suit until the war is over as a symbol of being a wartime president, but it is well known that Trump wears a suit everywhere. This would have given Zelensky more gravitas and shown respect to Trump.
Zelensky was clearly nervous, leaning forward in his seat and fidgeting. He should have sat in the chair like he was the president of a great power who belonged in the Oval Office, even though he is not. He also talked over Trump a number of times before the blowup, which had to irritate Trump.
The meeting was a press availability, and it went on far too long, which allowed the questions to detour into dangerous territory. Trump and Zelensky should have said a few nice platitudes about the warmth of their personal and national relationships and then Trump could have called on 2-3 reporters who could be relied on to ask harmless questions. Then they shake hands and get their photos taken. Instead, the meeting was already getting a bit tense before the explosion. And Zelensky was surely mentally tired from speaking English for 35+ minutes in a tense environment.
I blame J. D. Vance for blowing up the meeting. I think it was intentional, but I’ll grant the possibility that it may not have been. In any case, Vance had not spoken until about the 38-minute mark. Then he accused Zelensky of campaigning for the opposition in Pennsylvania and of disrespecting Trump, both of which are sore points for Trump. And he told Zelensky that the US was trying to save Ukraine by trusting Russia to keep a ceasefire, a sore point for Zelensky. And the explosion followed. You only bring up the most sensitive issues if you are trying to sabotage the meeting.
Vance has a much more isolationist foreign policy than Trump. He was able to swing Trump to his point of view because Vance is super articulate and quick on his feet. Yet it’s a dangerous game because Trump may become angry at some point if he feels he is being manipulated. Trump wanted to sign the rare earths deal when the meeting began, and it appeared that Zelensky intended to as well. So Vance is responsible for Trump not getting that deal signed. The Trump-Vance relationship may blow up at some point.
In the end I think the meeting will be positive for Zelensky. He will be seen as a hero in Ukraine for standing up to a superpower bully and not signing a deal without security guarantees. Europe is already pulling together a plan to aid Ukraine, and this debacle pushed Europe to act faster and stronger. I can’t imagine that the US would have continued shipping weapons to Ukraine much longer anyway because of Vance’s influence, so this meeting only accelerated the cutoff. And Zelensky didn’t sign an extortionate rare-earths deal in exchange for some nebulous promise that Trump might be able to do something more for Ukraine.
Published in Foreign Policy
Thanks for the insight.
Valuable insights. Thanks!
We have a wide variety of talents and expertise here in our friendly little hamlet.
I tend to agree with you from what I saw or heard of it, but I feel that there were probably things going on before the blow-up that I did not see or hear. Normally, as you say, things are held to a strict framework. I think that Vance seems to be taking on a bad cop role where diplomacy is concerned. Was it all intentional or a big SNAFU? I don’t know. How important was the rare-earths agreement to the USA? Apparently not enough to keep the lid on the discussion. Only time will tell.
Should never have gone long enough for Vance’s entry. It went that long because Zelensky came prepared to make it more than a meeting to sign the minerals deal, that was a wrong thing to do and shows his limited capability in this arena.
I agree with most of your points, Steve, and covered them in a post I wrote elsewhere. The one you didn’t mention is that when the Democrats met with Zelensky before his meeting with Trump, they set him up: they essentially said he should demand security and challenge Trump on his support of Putin. Zelensky was too naive to see that they were using him. But I also think it will eventually work out. Good post!
I’ve seen variations on this story (in one, they spoke to Z. on the phone, not in a meeting) but only giving it as a rumor.
Do you have a source?
The New York Post –https://nypost.com/2025/03/01/opinion/dems-lead-zelensky-ukraine-off-a-cliff-with-pressure-to-reject-mineral-deal/
Thanks, Susan.
Well reviewed. I kind interpreted the minerals agreement not simply as a practical economic thing, but as a way for Trump to get a US footprint in Ukraine to deter Russian yet not seem like a foreign military intervention.
Trump kept making statements about the mineral deal prior to any talk about security deals. Seemed like that missed. Maybe Z was too single minded and didn’t pick up on it. Regardless, Europe taking more responsibility in Europe is not necessarily a bad thing.
The WH meeting was strictly about having a ceremonial signing of the minerals deal, preceded by a nice press avail and a nice lunch. Nothing else. That had been made clear to Zelensky by Bessent during their meeting in Kiev on Feb 12. Then it was made clear to him again during his conversations with Rubio and Vance in Munich a few days later. Despite that, Zelensky arrived in Washington and tried to amend the deal on the fly. Bad, bad move.
Nope. It wasn’t Vance who blew things up. It was Zelensky. Check these play-by-play analyses out:
https://ricochet.com/1788838/the-zelenskyy-gambit/comment-page-10/#comment-7556761
https://ricochet.com/1788838/the-zelenskyy-gambit/comment-page-7/#comment-7554334
Also worth keeping in mind is the reaction to what happened and who’s to blame for it of one of Zelensky’s most fervent and devoted supporters over the years: Lindsey Graham. Zelensky’s behavior was a bridge too far even for him.
Zelensky FA’d, and then he FO’d.
Sorry I missed your post. I didn’t intend to duplicate.
Strictly speaking, the linked article only quotes Sen. Murphy as saying that Zelensky had confirmed he would not sign without a security guarantee. It doesn’t say that the Dems tried to influence him in that direction.
Once Zelensky signs, he has no leverage to demand a security guarantee. He’s got to get it at the time he signs, or it will never happen.
Good job, Steve.
Interesting is that was not a 1-1 meeting, it was a large gathering, that included at least Lindsey Graham for the R side, and possibly others. Graham later split with Zelensky after the disastrous Trump meeting, of course. Murphy has been all over X trashing Trump; the others in the meeting have been relatively quiet. Verrry interesting…
Copy pasta from Grok:
Good post. As several commenters have stated, I also understood the meeting was basically a photo-op for the signing of a pre-agreed upon deal (the “minerals agreement.”) Zelensky was the one who kept needling Trump WRT any several issues that weren’t on the agenda and which should not had been brought up for the first time in public and without sufficient diplomatic preparation having been done beforehand. Trump, for the most part, for the first half hour or so of the meeting demonstrated what passes–for Trump–as heroic self-restraint. I’d have preferred it if he’d cut things short before the meltdown, but he didn’t.
I also agree that there should have been interpreters. The first thing I noticed was Zelensky’s apparent confusion about Trump’s “you don’t hold any cards” metaphor. Zelensky appeared to take it literally (not seriously), and strenuously insisted that he wasn’t playing “games” and that he was being “serious.” I just don’t think he understood the nuance, or the idiom, there. Then when Zelensky said “you will feel it,” when I think his intent was to express the old “if you don’t fight them (Russians) over there (Europe), you’ll end up having to fight them over here (USA)” business, Trump got hung up on the words “you will feel it,” and that (I think) was when he really started to go off the rails, repeatedly telling Zelensky he didn’t have the right to tell people in this country how they were going to “feel.” And it just went downhill from that point on. Vance made it worse, but I think the barn door was open and the horse had already bolted by then.
I don’t think Zelensky is a particularly clever or subtle man. And because his cause is seen by most in the West as admirable, and his single-minded commitment to it as laudable, I don’t think he’s had to learn how to deal with pushback or disagreement over the past couple of years. I also suspect he’s still getting bad advice from former State Department officials and others in the US, and, I’m not sure he knows how to read the room, or if he understands that the power dynamics in the US are starkly different than they were six months ago.
I get the impression, he still thinks he’s “dancing with the one what brung him,” when–in fact–the one what brung him no longer…umm…holds any cards. As it were. At least on this side of the Atlantic.
I’ve said nothing about the Russia-Ukraine war save one comment, very early on, that anything that hurts Putin is probably good — at least to that extent. But I know next to nothing about the region and its history, and don’t have a strong opinion. My interests remain primarily with America, Israel, and Britain, and in that order.
But your comments here sound very sensible to me.
Thanks for saying that. I keep trying to write something similar, but every time I do, I start getting mad at the sheer stupidity of turning this into a press event. Get your pictures taken signing it and go to lunch.
Particularly when speaking a foreign language. He’s good in English, but you picked up several times when he and Trump miscommunicated because of the language.
Apparently it was all a sham, Ukraine signed an agreement with the UK in January. So, what was Zelensky’s angle in having this meeting?
Your comment refers to the pre-meeting with the Senators, but the same is true of the explosive press availability in the Oval Office. Both Trump and Vance were speaking on the American side, but Zelensky was by himself. He should have had a second with him since our side did. A second can observe while you speak and whisper in your ear and grab your pant leg if you need to shut up. I don’t know if Zelensky normally flies without a wingman, but in this situation it cost him.
Zelensky had a “wingman” a couple of feet behind his right shoulder, who leaned over and whispered to him at least once during the Oval Office meeting.
In the runup to the meeting, the planners on both sides need to be alert to a situation where the parties are talking past each other. I agree it was a big mistake for Zelensky to try to discuss security guarantees in a public meeting, but the deputies on both sides should have seen at the preparatory meetings in Europe that there was not yet a meeting of the minds (assuming the principals didn’t realize it).
There should have been a written framework initialed by both sides before the formal signing and clarity that this is the entirety of the agreement. That avoids unpleasant surprises like we had on Friday.
Trump lost too because he was the only principal in the room who really wanted the rare-earths deal to be signed. Zelensky wasn’t interested in signing without a security guarantee, and Vance seems opposed to any deal. Now it’s going to take major effort to get the rare-earths deal signed, if it happens at all.
I was involved in an international commercial negotiation with a Russian company with a similar situation. The principals were brought in too soon to finalize the deal, and it turned out that each party had expectations about the deal that had not been put in writing. Those should have been ironed out by deputies beforehand, but they weren’t. Once it became clear that the sides were talking past each other, the negotiations should have been adjourned. But my boss and the other principal got heated and started yelling at each other. My boss got the best of the Russian side in the verbal repartee at the meeting, but it took two years and my boss being fired to repair the damage.
When Trump said, “you don’t have any cards.” and Zelenskyy replied with, “I am not playing a game.” you just knew there were communication issues. Or, that Zelenskyy is just a comedian and trying to be an ass.
That’s a good observation. I didn’t notice that. Maybe his wingman failed him. Or maybe Zelensky blew past his signals.
I thought it was interesting that Trump said that he “let it go on this long, so that everyone could see that Zelenskyy wanted escalation of the war”.
Vance jumped in to put an end to Zelenskyy’s ranting about security guarantees, but then Zelenkyy made a veiled threat against Trump/America (don’t forget a pro-Ukraine guy tried to assassinate Trump in Florida) and that totally derailed the meeting.
But Trump letting it go so long also locked both sides into positions that will be hard to back down from. Cutting the meeting off when it became apparent that Zelensky would only sign with a security guarantee would have allowed more negotiations behind the scenes to finesse the security guarantee. And Trump would still have had a good chance to get the rare-earths deal, which was important to him.
Yes. Zelensky seemed very amateurish in his opening statement (of the news availability part), when he attacked Putin in very personal and abusive terms. That should be a no-no in front of the press. He seemed to be trying to get Trump to agree with his assessment. Trump, wisely in my opinion, didn’t go there; he needs to keep a dialog open with Putin as he attempts to actually help bring the war to a long overdue end. This was a conversation that should have remained private.
I’m starting to re-think this part of my post after listening to Marc and Dany’s What the Hell podcast. It sounds like Trump was really intending to continue sending weapons to Ukraine. And the rare-earths deal had been re-drafted to be more favorable to Ukraine.
That makes it all sound rather foolish. Deciding not to do what someone knows is the right thing, just because someone was insulting or “uppity” or whatever, isn’t right. It’s like when you hear about 911 operators who hang up on someone because they used a “bad word” or something, and the result is a disaster.
The agreement was done two weeks ago. And, yes, it was more favorable to Ukraine than the initial draft. Zelensky agreed to sign it, there were two opportunities prior to the Washington meeting. The DC meeting was not to work on an agreement, it was the third opportunity for Zelensky to sign.
Of course, it wasn’t signed. Zelensky already solidified a minerals arrangement with the UK in January.
So, what do you think the purpose of the meeting was? Zelensky wasn’t there for a US-Ukraine agreement.