In the wake of a meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which was cut short after an argument at the Oval Office, President Donald Trump told reporters what his Ukrainian counterpart had to do to receive an invitation back to the White House.
“He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace,’” Trump said while walking to board Marine One on Friday evening.
“He doesn’t have to stand there and say, ‘Putin this, Putin that,’ all negative things. He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace. I don’t want to fight a war any longer.’ These people are dying. He doesn’t have the cards.”
Hours earlier, a meeting between the two parties in the Oval Office devolved into a shouting match. Matters broke down when Zelenskyy began to demand that the deal be changed to include more security guarantees from the United States before he signed the deal.
Trump told Zelenskyy in the Oval Office that Ukraine is “not in a very good position.”
“You don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards,” Trump said.
“You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III,” Trump said. “What you’re doing is very disrespectful to this country.”
“He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace,” Trump went on to write on Truth Social.
Trump shared before leaving the White House that Zelenskyy had already expressed his desire to come back to the White House, and Trump said he couldn’t let the Ukrainian leader return.
The president also said that Zelenskyy no longer wanted a cease-fire with Russia and stressed to the members of the press, “You can’t embolden somebody that does not have the cards.”
“I want it to end immediately,” Trump said of the war in Ukraine. ”I want a cease-fire now. He says, ‘Oh, I don’t want a cease-fire.’ Well, all of a sudden he’s a big shot because he has the U.S. on his side.”
“Either we’re going to end it or let him fight it out,” Trump said. “And if he fights it out, it’s not going to be pretty, because without it, without us, he doesn’t win.”
Zelenskyy later told Fox News’s Bret Baier that no one wanted the war to end more than he and the people of Ukraine. As to the primary reason he came to Washington, to sign the minerals agreement, Zelenskyy said he was ready to sign it.
However, Zelenskyy said he won’t agree to a cease-fire until his country has security guarantees from the United States safeguarding them from another Russian offensive.
“We want peace,” he said. “That’s why I’m in the United States. That’s why I visited President Trump. And thanks for the invitation again. The deal on minerals is the first step to security guarantees. It’s meant for the peace. Closer to peace.”
When asked if he felt like he owed Trump an apology for how he acted in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy appeared to disagree and stressed the need to talk with Trump again to hear his plans to stop Russian leader Vladimir Putin and secure peace for Ukraine.
“I respect [the] American people,” the Ukrainian leader said. “I think that we have to be very open and very honest, and I’m not sure that we did something bad. I think maybe sometimes, some things we have to discuss [outside] of media, with all respect to democracy and to a free media. But there are things that, where we have to understand the position of Ukraine and Ukrainians, and I think that is the most important thing.”
