To say that President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance had much personal animosity toward President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on his state visit to the White House on February 28, would truly be an understatement. Trump should have neither engaged in nor allowed an acrimonious shouting match (transcript) to occur during an Oval Office televised press conference.
The president as the U.S. chief diplomat should have been nipped Vance’s heated disagreements with Zelensky in the bud. Trump himself also should have shown much greater self-control, who is not exactly known for being a statesman.
Berating, bullying and humiliating a foreign head of state, who is not especially fluent in English (e.g. “have the cards” idiom) and might have been misinformed hours before his visit, is beneath the dignity and office of the presidency. I genuinely felt sorry for Zelensky at times witnessing Vance loudly and ignorantly lecturing him while often speaking over him and implying that he was an ingrate.
This was in addition to Trump previously and falsely accusing Zelinsky of receiving $350 billion worth of U.S. military, financial and humanitarian aid since 2022, and never saying “thank you.”
Vance’s falsehood was repeated despite the fact that that Zelensky has publicly stated thirty-three times expressing his gratitude for U.S. military assistance, financial and humanitarian aid in the past. Plus, Vance has unbelievably never once “visited” Ukraine when Zelensky once asked him except for probably watching Fox News, Newsmax and other video news reports.
As previously mentioned both Vance and Trump also need to get their financial facts correct after misstating that the U.S. has spent $350 billion in Ukraine instead of the actual $119.7 billion according to the Kiel Institute in Germany. That is a totally deceptive difference of $230.3 billion! The $350 billion represents the approximate total collective effort of NATO’s aid to Ukraine and not the United States alone.
Where is this $350 billion number originating? I have a theory that this dollar amount has been greatly inflated so Trump can potentially extract or perhaps exploit more rare earth minerals from Ukraine in the future.
In retrospect, Trump should have politely and immediately stopped the initial argument between Vance and Zelensky, and continued their “disagreement” in a civil manner later behind closed doors. That is diplomacy 101.
In my opinion, Vance, who is rather envious of Elon Musk’s DOGE’s recent huge media attention, reminded me of an attack dog in the spirit of former President Richard Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew (1969-73) or President Gerald Ford’s vice presidential candidate Senator Robert Dole in 1976. Trump‘s irate and disgraceful behavior was also much worse than anything that I have ever witnessed or read about any president or vice president since 1789.
Unfortunately, both the U.S. and the entire world witnessed close to five minutes of political infighting and angry accusations between two supposed “allies.” The only winner in all this better anger was President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who undoubtedly invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and now controls 20% of Ukraine.
This major disagreement between Trump and Zelensky may also motivate Putin to “escalate the fight” before he deescalates, and improve his bargaining stance before any future peace negotiations. Putin certainly must have been overjoyed in watching the belligerent dissension with immense schadenfreude between Trump and Zelensky.
As Putin’s sycophantic lackey Dimitri Medvedev, Russia’s former president (2008-12), Prime Minister. (2012-20) and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia (2020-25), happily observed during the early afternoon of February 28, “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office. And @realDonaldTrump is right: The Kiev [sic] regime is “gambling with WWIII [sic].”
The Russo-Ukrainian war is painfully unwinnable for Ukraine. Zelensky needs to conduct peace talks with Trump that will quickly end this war, which must include unequivocal security guarantees. He also must realize that Ukraine cannot join NATO, and must become a neutral country like Switzerland, Austria or Serbia.
However, without any explicit security guarantees to defend Ukraine in Trump’s mineral rights agreement, it would be essentially meaningless for Ukraine to expect any military aid from the U.S. in case of another Russian attack. This would be especially true if Russia invaded Ukraine on January 20, 2029 when Trump would no longer be president.
According to the New York Times, who claimed to obtain a copy of the draft mineral rights agreement on February 26, “the reference [to a security guarantee] is vague and does not signal any specific American commitment to safeguarding Ukraine’s security.” This is most likely the reason why Zelensky did not sign the mineral rights agreement on February 28 because of a possible change in “point 10” of the agreement.
Ukraine in this century has no desire to resemble tragic Poland from September 1, 1939 until June 4. 1989 when It was first equally partitioned under both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union until 1945, and then under the control of the Soviet Union until 1989.
The White House is either incredibly naive or callously indifferent to think that rare earth mining contracts alone (valued at $14.8 trillion according to Forbes Ukraine) will ever prevent Russia from reinvading Ukraine, and then have their contracts be commercially honored by the Kremlin. The mere thought is both laughable and stupid.
If Russia were to annex all or most of Ukraine, which has “about 5% of the world’s reserves of rare earth elements,” any U S.-Ukrainian rare earth mining contract would be null and void or lessened, thus making Biden’s surrender of Kabul and Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan on August 30, 202 appear decently honorable.
I predict that Ukraine’s future existence will reside in obtaining explicit security guarantees primarily from European NATO countries and not the U.S. That is because Ukraine does not want to be a sacrificial lamb to Trump‘s grand strategy of befriending Putin like President Nixon once did to Mao Zedong in 1972 in order to counter and isolate Communist China for the remainder of the century.
However, Trump could easily change his mind so that he could never be accused of “losing” Ukraine like President Truman was once accused of losing China to communism in 1949.
If Ukraine is ever allowed to be conquered and annexed by Russia, our military record for trustworthiness after the fall of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975 and our defeat in Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, will greatly diminish and destroy Washington’s credibility and reliability for the rest of the century.
As Trump, who is most ambitiously in search of a coveted Nobel Peace Prize like Obama, later stated on Truth Social on February 28, “I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace [sic] if America is involved, …. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace [sic].”
The only problem with Trump’s “PEACE” proposal without including any explicit security guarantees in a mineral rights agreement is that it presently promises Ukraine that the Russian sword of Damocles will continue to hang over its head while only promising them the “PEACE” of the grave.
As British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated in the House of Commons on March 3, “the minerals deal between the U.S. and Ukraine is “not enough” of a security guarantee on its own.” Unless Ukraine receives explicit security guarantees from both the U.S. and European NATO countries, its future will be dismal.
N.B. I wrote this column on March 4 at 6:15 p.m. before President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress at 9 p.m. ET.