CNN
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Top US officials are piling heat on Volodymyr Zelensky, suggesting he may need to relinquish power after his disastrous Oval Office meeting — even as Europe embraces the Ukrainian president more tightly than ever.
The contrast highlighted the most damaging split in the Western alliance at least since the Berlin Wall fell and bolstered a sense that the “free world” has been pushed to the brink of fracturing early in President Donald Trump’s new term.
Yet the sight of Europe stepping into the impasse left by Trump’s first bid to end the Ukraine war could also represent hope that good could come out of the debacle of Zelensky’s visit. That’s if the continent can, as it promised Sunday, construct a peace plan to hand to the US president.
Still, the fallout from Zelensky’s calamitous trip to Washington is growing.
Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday that the administration now questions whether Zelensky really wants to end the conflict.
“We need a leader that can deal with us, eventually deal with the Russians, and end this war,” Waltz said. “If it becomes apparent that President Zelensky’s either personal motivations or political motivations are divergent from ending the fighting in his country, then I think we have a real issue on our hands.”
Waltz’s comment underscores the US’ position that the war must end no matter what as Trump races toward a rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin after falsely blaming Zelensky for the unprovoked invasion.
But British Prime Minister Keir Starmer led a gathering of Western leaders in London on Sunday that welcomed Zelensky as a guest of honor. In a highly symbolic move, King Charles III granted Zelensky an hourlong audience, days after inviting Trump to a second state visit. Starmer promised a “coalition of the willing” to arm and defend Ukraine and warned again that any durable peace would need US security guarantees Trump has not yet offered.
And France and Britain also proposed a monthlong limited truce in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron told the newspaper Le Figaro on Sunday. Zelensky said he was aware of the proposal but did not say whether he agreed with it.
The aggressive European leadership effort came as Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said Ukraine’s allies needed to turn the country into a “steel porcupine that is indigestible for potential invaders.”
How the Oval Office showdown changed the dynamics of the peace effort, and the West
The extraordinary scene Friday, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Zelensky — and then kicked him out of the White House — is already an indelible moment in the history of modern US foreign policy.
The bullying of the leader of a democratic nation under a Russian tyrant’s illegal onslaught that has killed thousands of civilians sent shock waves through Washington and around the world. Trump’s critics accuse him of siding with the invader in a repudiation of every US foreign policy value since World War II.
For Trump’s supporters and key subordinates, however, the dressing down of Zelensky was a triumph. They argue it projected strength and epitomized the “America first” policy that has transformed the nation’s global role.
Heated commentary and proclamations that the West is over in recent days may have been cathartic for all involved. But they hardly serve the cause of peace or the interests of the key players — apart from Putin, who must be enjoying the splintering of the West — long his principal foreign policy aim.
— Trump’s Cabinet members took to the Sunday cable news shows praising their boss. Yet Friday’s fury undermined the claim that Trump is a masterful dealmaker and the only man alive who can end the war. It’s clear Trump’s only plan was to impose a peace deal on Ukraine after offering multiple concessions to Putin. And the showdown derailed a proposed deal for the US to exploit Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals that Trump saw as a huge personal win. His insistence that he is a global peacemaker and his quest to win the Nobel Peace Prize now look more unrealistic than ever.
— Zelensky’s loss of his cool contributed to the diplomatic cataclysm, even if he was trying to explain to Vance and Trump why Ukraine is skeptical of a peace that does not include guarantees after Putin’s repeated trashing of agreements. It’s hard to imagine how Zelensky can ever sit at a peace table with Trump, and the US president could now decide to cut pending aid, intelligence and other support for Ukraine that could impede its forces on the battlefield.
— The drama in the Oval Office prompted America’s European allies into emergency action. They now intend to shield Zelensky from Trump and hope to draw up a viable peace framework that they could give to him as a basis for talks with Putin. But if the US walks away from Ukraine, Europe’s capacity to fill the gap is questionable, largely because of its years of slashing military spending, its eroded military production base and its own reliance on US security guarantees to NATO members.
House Speaker Mike Johnson reinforced Waltz’s warnings about the Ukrainian leader. “Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude, or someone else needs to lead the country to do that,” the Louisiana Republican said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
After the Oval Office breakdown Friday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham — who has been a supporter of Zelensky — chose to prioritize his loyalties to Trump, saying, “I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelensky again.”
On “State of the Union,” Bash asked Waltz why he had once compared Zelensky to British wartime leader Winston Churchill but referred to him on Sirius XM on Saturday as an “ex-girlfriend that wants to argue.”
“If we want to do a history lesson — Churchill … stood and fought for his people,” Waltz said. “But Churchill was also voted out of office in 1945. He was a man for a moment, but he did not then transition England into the next phase. And it’s unclear whether President Zelensky, particularly after what we saw Friday, is ready to transition to Ukraine to an end to this war and to negotiate and have to compromise.”
Waltz’s analogy misses important context. Like Ukraine, Britain didn’t hold elections during wartime because of the national emergency. The 1945 election followed the Labour Party’s exit from the national unity coalition — but only after victory in the European war was achieved and peace was secure. British troops were however still fighting in the Pacific war.
Ukraine was due to hold an election last year, but it was delayed while the country is under a Russian barrage with troops on the front lines and millions of refugees abroad. This reality undercuts the calls for the Ukrainian leader to go and Trump’s claims that Zelensky is a “dictator” — another Russian propaganda favorite. In December, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who leads the largest Ukrainian opposition party, told a Council on Foreign Relations forum that elections should take place only “60 days after our victory.”
Zelensky’s vilification in Washington and his embrace in London laid bare an estrangement between the US and its European allies, precipitated not just by Ukraine but by the Trump administration’s warning that the continent must now take primary responsibility for its conventional defense.
The best-case scenario for the latest European initiative is that it proves to the US that Britain and its European Union friends are serious about fulfilling Trump’s calls to police an eventual peace deal and that simultaneous promises to hike defense budgets preserve the NATO alliance despite the president’s skepticism.
Europe may be betting that Trump needs its help to forge a peace deal that he’d rightly claim as a huge victory. And while the president’s attempts to forge peace have so far been erratic and have favored Putin’s positions, his friendship with the Kremlin strongman means he may be the only Western leader who can coax him to the table.
Europeans got some encouragement of a more evenhanded US role on Sunday when Waltz said on “State of the Union” that an agreement was “going to take Russian concessions on security guarantees.”
But Trump is yet to agree to Starmer’s and Macron’s calls for a US backstop to any British- and French-led peace force. The British prime minister tried to dismiss suggestions of tension with the Trump team, saying Sunday, “I do not accept that the US is an unreliable ally.”
Still, two top members of Trump’s orbit sought to sabotage the European initiative.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, argued European countries that supported Zelensky after he was ejected from the White House are “not committed to the cause and values of freedom” and don’t believe in peace. Her remarks on “Fox News Sunday” will cause alarm in Europe, since they recall Moscow’s talking points and because of her role as the top US spy.
And Elon Musk, who is an ally of far-right extremists in Europe and slams the region’s leaders — including Starmer — mocked the London summit. “The EU leaders and Zelensky having fancy dinners while men die in trenches,” he wrote on X. “How many parents will never see their son again? How many children will never see their father?”