Policy

Four things Zelensky said to Trump in the Vatican. And he agreed with three of them

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy made the most of his 15 minutes with US President Donald Trump at the Vatican. He urged him to take a tougher stance against Putin and refocus on the truce. And the latter seems to have heard Zelenskyy. Axios reports this with reference to two sources informed about the meeting, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.

Zelensky’s advisers were divided over whether he should risk going to a face-to-face meeting after the Oval Office disaster. But after the meeting, Zelenskiy felt that he had succeeded in changing Trump’s mind about Putin for the first time, sources say. On the way home, Trump made a rare threat against Putin in response to the massive air attack on Kyiv.

“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to end the war, he’s just leading me by the nose and needs to be dealt with differently, through banking or secondary sanctions,”

– Trump wrote on his social network Truth Social.

How the meeting was organized

Zelenskyy received signals before Pope Francis’ funeral that Trump was ready to meet on the sidelines of the event, sources say.

Zelenskiy’s advisers were nervous, and some of them-still traumatized by the events in the Oval Office on February 28-told Zelenskiy they were not sure it was a good idea.

Nothing had been finalized in advance, and the idea was initially that they would try to meet after the funeral, one source said.

But then the leaders accidentally bumped into each other when they arrived. They found a place to meet privately at St. Peter’s Basilica.

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Four things Zelenskiy said to Trump

According to the newspaper, Zelensky told Trump three things, which he surprisingly agreed with.

1. Zelensky said that Putin would not budge unless Trump increased pressure on him. The US president replied that he might have to change his approach to Putin. Later, he wrote a post criticizing Putin on Truth Social.
2. Zelenskiy called on Trump to return to his original proposal for an unconditional ceasefire as a starting point for peace talks, which Ukraine accepted but Russia rejected. One source said Trump seemed to agree to this as well. The White House later neither confirmed nor denied this.
3. Zelenskiy reiterated at the meeting that he would not recognize Crimea as Russian, and Trump made it clear that he was not asking him to do so, one source said. The plan calls for recognition by the US, not Ukraine.
4. Zelenskiy told Trump that he is not afraid to make concessions to end the war, but he needs strong enough security guarantees to do so. This is the only point that the sources did not say Trump agreed to in any way.

What Trump said

During the conversation, Trump insisted that Zelenskiy sign the US-Ukraine minerals agreement as soon as possible, the source said.

Zelenskyy most likely traditionally expressed his agreement in principle.

Intrigue

Sources said one potential reason why this meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy was more positive is that it was not attended by Vice President Vance and White House envoy Steve Witkoff, who are seen by Ukrainians as more supportive of the Russian position.

Zelenskiy was scheduled to give an interview to ABC’s “This Week” program on Sunday morning, but decided to cancel it after some technical problems with the translation.

“It was a great meeting, and Zelenskiy didn’t want to take any chances,”

– the source said.

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