Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he was still ‘ready’ to sign a minerals deal with the United States that fell through after a televised clash with president Donald Trump.
‘We are ready to sign the minerals agreement, and it will be the first step toward security guarantees,’ Zelensky said in a post on X.
On Friday, Zelensky said that his relations with the United States can still be repaired, after president Donald Trump shouted at him in an angry White House meltdown accusing the Ukrainian leader of refusing to make peace with Russia.
‘Of course,’ Zelensky said when asked in a Fox News interview if the relationship with Trump could be salvaged.
US-Ukrainian ties are about ‘more than two presidents,’ he said, adding that Ukraine badly needs Washington’s help in the fight against Russia’s far bigger and better-armed military.
‘It will be difficult without your support,’ Zelensky said on Fox—Trump’s favourite news channel.
Trump-Zelensky row sparks political firestorm
Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Friday said US president Donald Trump showed ‘restraint’ by not hitting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky during their shouting match in the White House.
‘I think Zelensky’s biggest lie of all his lies was his assertion in the White House that the Kyiv regime in 2022 was alone, without support,’ she wrote on Telegram.
‘How Trump and Vance held back from hitting that scumbag is a miracle of restraint,’ she said, adding that Zelensky was ‘biting the hand that feeds him’.
‘The visit of the head of the neo-Nazi regime, V Zelensky, to Washington on February 28 is a complete political and diplomatic failure of the Kyiv regime,’ Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who is now deputy head of Russia’s security council, called Zelensky an ‘insolent pig’ who had received ‘a proper slap down in the Oval Office’.
Russia said Saturday that Zelensky’s trip to the United States had been a ‘failure’.
French president Emmanuel Macron said Russia was the ‘aggressor’ in the Ukraine war.
‘There is an aggressor which is Russia. There is an aggressed people which is Ukraine,’ Macron told journalists, adding: ‘if anyone is playing at World War III, it’s Vladimir Putin’, referring to Trump’s accusations against Zelensky.
Reactions to an extraordinary Oval Office clash among US president Trump, vice-president JD Vance and Zelensky laid bare America’s political divisions on the grinding three-year conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Democrats accused Trump and Vance of doing Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s ‘dirty work’.
But Republicans said the US leaders were right to accuse pro-Western Zelensky of lacking gratitude for American support in Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion.
British prime minister Keir Starmer, who met Trump this week, vowed ‘unwavering support’ for Ukraine and spoke to both Trump and Zelensky following their meeting.
Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz said: ‘We must never confuse the aggressor and the victim in this terrible war.’
Baerbock said Saturday the ‘unspeakable’ row between Trump and Zelensky resembled a ‘bad dream’ as Kyiv’s European allies rallied to its side. ‘Yesterday [Friday] evening underlined that a new age of infamy has begun.’
European leaders, however, backed Zelensky after his White House showdown that has cast doubts on efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
European Union chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa assured Zelensky that he was ‘never alone’.
Ukraine’s European allies, set to gather in London on Sunday, rallied behind Zelensky.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio called Friday for Zelensky to apologise for an earlier clash with Trump.
Zelensky should ‘apologise for wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did,’ Rubio said on CNN.
Ordinary Ukrainians, however, were dumbfounded by Friday’s raised-voice confrontation between Zelensky and Trump.
Zelensky planned to sign a minerals deal with the United States during the visit, but it ended in disaster when Trump and vice-president JD Vance accused the Ukrainian leader of being ‘disrespectful’.
Kyiv had hoped the agreement would pave the way for security guarantees from Washington, as it fights the full-scale offensive Russia launched in 2022.