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We are very grateful to the United States for all the support. I’m thankful to President Trump, Congress for their bipartisan support, and American people. Ukrainians have always appreciated this support, especially during these three years of full-scale invasion.
America’s help has been vital in helping us survive, and I want to acknowledge that. Despite the tough dialogue, we remain strategic partners. But we need to be honest and direct with each other to truly understand our shared goals.
It’s crucial for us to have President Trump’s support. He wants to end the war, but no one wants peace more than we do. We are the ones living this war in Ukraine. It’s a fight for our freedom, for our very survival.
As President Reagan once said: ‘Peace is not just the absence of war.’ We’re talking about just and lasting peace – freedom, justice, and human rights for everyone. A ceasefire won’t work with Putin. He has broken ceasefires 25 times over the last 10 years. A real peace is the only solution.
We are ready to sign the minerals agreement, and it will be the first step toward security guarantees. But it’s not enough, and we need more than just that. A ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine. We’ve been fighting for three years, and Ukrainian people need to know that America is on our side.
I cannot change Ukraine’s position on Russia. The Russians are killing us. Russia is the enemy, and that’s the reality we face. Ukraine wants peace, but it must be a just and lasting peace. For that, we need to be strong at the negotiation table. Peace can only come when we know we have security guarantees, when our army is strong, and our partners are with us.
We want peace. That’s why I came to the United States, and visited President Trump. The deal on minerals is just a first step toward security guarantees and getting closer to peace. Our situation is tough, but we can’t just stop fighting and not having guarantees that Putin will not return tomorrow.
It will be difficult without the US support. But we can’t lose our will, our freedom, or our people. We’ve seen how Russians came to our homes and killed many people. Nobody wants another wave of occupation. If we cannot be accepted to Nato, we need some clear structure of security guarantees from our allies in the US.
Europe is ready for contingencies and to help fund our large army. We also need the US role in defining security guarantees – what kind, what volume, and when. Once these guarantees are in place, we can talk with Russia, Europe, and the US about diplomacy. War alone is too long, and we don’t have enough weapons to push them out entirely.
When someone talks about losses, every single life matters. Russia invaded our homes, killed our people, and tried to erase us. This isn’t just about territories or numbers – it’s about real lives. That’s what we need everyone to understand.
I want the US to stand more firmly on our side. This is not just a war between our two countries; Russia brought this war on to our territory and into our homes. They are wrong because they disrespected our territorial integrity.
All Ukrainians want to hear a strong US position on our side. It’s understandable the US might look for dialogue with Putin. But the US has always spoken about ‘peace through strength’. And together we can take strong steps against Putin.
Our relationship with the American president is more than just two leaders; it’s a historic and solid bond between our peoples. That’s why I always begin with words of gratitude from our nation to the American nation.
American people helped save our people. Humans and human rights come first. We’re truly thankful. We want only strong relations with America, and I really hope we will have them.
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Patrick Wintour
As Keir Starmer surveys the wreckage of the US-Ukrainian relationship caused by the Oval Office bar-room fight, the UK prime minister is clearly intent on trying to repair the diplomatic damage, but it may be that the mood of mutual antagonism not just in the US, but in Europe, is too great.
It is not as if Starmer, to use Trump’s blunt phraseology, has many cards left to play. He had already played them, and his hand was not strong enough to prevent the US-Ukraine breakdown.
Courtesy of King Charles, he offered an unprecedented second state visit to President Trump. He had rushed through a cut in the overseas aid budget so as to be in a position to present Trump with an increase in UK defence spending, and during his meeting on Thursday he had fawned over Trump’s ability to “change the conversation over Ukraine”.
Yet despite the decent atmospherics, Starmer, in common with Emmanuel Macron earlier in the week, could not extract the one concession he wanted: a clear US commitment to provide security guarantees – principally air cover and intelligence – for a European force being prepared to oversee a ceasefire inside Ukraine. Trump continued to insist he trusted Vladimir Putin to abide by the ceasefire and focused on the concessions Ukraine was going to have to make.
Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, has called the EU’s “peace through force” strategy unrealistic and said the necessity of an immediate ceasefire should be in the EU summit’s conclusions.
He also wanted a demand for the reopening of Russian gas transit through Ukraine to be included, after a dispute with Kyiv this year when it halted the shipment of gas, forcing Slovakia to find different routes.
“If the summit does not respect that there are other views than continuing the war, the European Council on Thursday may not be able to agree on conclusions on Ukraine,” Fico said in a Facebook post.
King Charles is expected to talk to president Zelenskyy at his Sandringham estate on Sunday amid concerns over trans-Atlantic diplomatic tensions, the Sun newspaper is reporting.
Pjotr Sauer
Russian officials and Moscow’s media outlets reacted with predictable glee to the dramatic clash between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump at the White House on Friday.
Posting on social media, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s deputy on the security council and former president, called the exchange “a brutal dressing-down in the Oval Office”.
He wrote: “Trump told the … clown [Zelenskyy] the truth to his face: the Kyiv regime is playing with the third world war … This is useful. But it’s not enough – we need to stop military support [to Ukraine].”
In recent days, concern grew in Moscow as Trump seemed to lean toward a more Zelenskyy-friendly position following visits to Washington by the leaders of Poland, France and Britain, who urged support for Ukraine. Trump had indicated a willingness to back European peacekeepers in Ukraine – a move Kyiv and European governments saw as essential to preventing Moscow from reigniting the war, as it had after previous ceasefires.
But any worries the Kremlin may have had faded when Zelenskyy found himself ambushed by Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance.
“How Trump and Vance held back from hitting that scumbag is a miracle of restraint,” wrote Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, on Telegram.
The prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, has urged the European Union to open peace negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
Orbán said: “I am convinced that the European Union – following the example of the United States – should enter into direct discussions with Russia on a ceasefire and a sustainable peace in Ukraine.”
The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, said Ukraine would be ‘nowhere’ without US support. Photograph: Jakub Gavlák/EPA
Speaking to the BBC on Saturday, the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, said yesterday’s fracas between Trump and Zelenskyy was “unfortunate” and they should repair their relationship.
“I have been twice on the phone now with President Zelenskyy. I told him this, we need to stick together, the United States, Ukraine and Europe, to bring Ukraine to a durable peace,” said Rutte.
When asked what Zelenskyy said about his meeting with Trump, Rutte said he was not at liberty to disclose what he discussed, “but what I clearly told him is that we really have to respect what President Trump has done so far for Ukraine”, referring to the Javelin anti-tank missiles supplied by the US.
Rutte added that the Ukraine would be “nowhere” without American support. “So I told him, we really have to give Trump credit for what he did then, what America did since then, and also what America is still doing.”
Rutte insisted that Trump was committed to engineering a lasting peace in Ukraine, but said the US president wanted Europe and Canada to spend more on defence
Listen, I spoke for half an hour on Thursday with Donald Trump, on the phone with President Trump. We are friends. We have worked for years together. I know he is committed to bring Ukraine to a durable peace. He is committed to Nato. Of course. He expects European Nato partners in Canada to spend more and to ramp up defence production. And he is right there.
I’m absolutely convinced that the US wants to bring Ukraine to this durable peace … But obviously what they need to get there is to make sure that we all work together on this. And it is important that President Zelenskyy finds a way to restore his relationship with the American president and with the senior American leadership team. I discussed this yesterday with Zelenskyy, also with Keir Starmer, and now they will meet later today, Zelenskyy and Starmer, and tomorrow, there will be an important meeting in your beautiful capital.
When the peace deal is struck, it is important, and I think that will come out of tomorrow, that many European countries are willing to help to make sure that the security guarantees are in place in Ukraine, to make sure that that peace deal is lasting and will not be challenged by the Russians again.
The US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, has given Fox News a first-person account of the moment he told a “still argumentative” Volodymyr Zelenskyy it was time to leave the White House.
Trump and Zelenskyy retreated to separate rooms after the fracas in the Oval Office ended, Waltz said on Saturday, and he, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other top officials then “advised the president – pretty much unanimously advised the president – that after that insult in the Oval Office, we just do not see how that can move forward, that any further engagement would only go backwards from this moment on”.
Asked by Fox News whether Zelenskyy seemed to recognise what had happened, Waltz said: “No, he didn’t. Frankly, his team did. His ambassador and his adviser were practically – I mean, they were practically in tears wanting this to move forward. But Zelenskyy was still argumentative.”
Waltz said he told Zelenskyy: “Time is not on your side here. Time is not on your side on the battlefield. Time is not on your side in terms of the world situation, and, most importantly, US aid and the taxpayers’ tolerance is not unlimited.”
Zelenskyy, he added, “has not gotten the memo that this is a new sheriff in town. This is a new president, and we are determined to take a new approach towards peace.”
Muscovites have welcomed Donald Trump’s clash with the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Friday.
“Frankly speaking, it was very pleasing that he got such a rebuke in the White House,” nursery worker Galina Tolstykh told the AFP, referring to the way Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, denigrated Zelenskyy in the meeting. “And it was nice that things were finally starting to go in the right direction,” the 63-year-old told AFP in central Moscow on Saturday.
“It was very strange and very uncomplimentary for Zelenskyy as a president,” said the 20-year-old waiter Fyodor. “It seems to me that this is not the way a president of a country should behave,” he added of Zelenskyy. “Trump himself said a very true thing, that Ukraine has no winning cards in its hands. Except for signing a peace agreement and signing a ceasefire agreement in general, they don’t have many options.”
Anastasia, a 26-year-old waitress, said the fracas was unpleasant but hoped it could end the war with Ukraine.
“It’s not good, of course, that this situation happened. But in general, we are all glad that everything is going to its logical conclusion,” she told AFP.
Geneva Abdul
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the support of the US is crucial as he arrived in the UK to meet Keir Starmer after his clash with Donald Trump.
The Ukrainian president will meet the prime minister in Downing Street on Saturday afternoon before a defence summit of European leaders on Sunday.
Zelenskyy arrived in the UK on Saturday morning after the unprecedented public clash with Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, in the White House’s Oval Office on Friday. His plane, emblazoned with the Ukrainian flag, touched down at Stansted airport and was met by a convoy of cars.
Since Friday, leaders have been scrambling to mitigate the fallout from the diplomatic meltdown in Washington. The meeting had been set up to discuss a rare earth minerals deal in exchange for US support in Ukraine…
Read more:
Speaking from Leicester’s King Power stadium on Saturday afternoon, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told LBC: “This government is not going to choose between countries.”
We need to work with our allies and partners across the world and we’ll continue to do that. But Ukrainian people can know that this government, this country, stands fully behind the Ukrainian people.
We have committed £3bn a year for as long as it takes to support Ukraine, as recently passing legislation to enable frozen Russian assets, the profits on those, to be used to support Ukraine.
And the first tranche of that £3bn worth of funding will be unlocked in the next few days as a sign of our ongoing commitment to support the people of Ukraine.
Luke Harding
My colleague, Luke Harding, has reported on the reaction in Ukraine after the US president, Donald Trump, publicly lambasted his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy:
Ukrainians have rallied behind Volodymyr Zelenskyy after his mauling on Friday in the White House, and have accused Donald Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, of deliberately and cynically “starting a brawl”.
There was widespread support for Ukraine’s president at home and dismay at his car-crash encounter in the Oval Office. There was also praise for Zelenskyy’s insistence that a peace deal without security guarantees was meaningless, and that Russia could not be trusted …
The Ukrainian journalist and blogger Ilia Ponomorenko said even if Zelenskyy had sat in silence for 40 minutes Trump would have “found a reason to get offended” and started “a brawl anyway”. “You simply can’t win with people who don’t actually want a standard, successful meeting,” he told his 1.1 million followers on X.
He added: “We can talk endlessly about Ze’s missteps and diplomatic setbacks, but the reality is – under any circumstances – he was always going to be called a beggar, a war gambler pushing the world toward world war three, someone who doesn’t want peace, isn’t thankful enough.
“And, most importantly, someone standing between Trump and his sweet little deal with Putin – who has promised him oceans of gold in exchange for Ukraine”…
Read Luke’s full report here:
AFP provides some lines from the Russian foreign ministry statement on last night’s clash between Zelenskyy and Trump:
“The visit of the head of the neo-Nazi regime, V Zelenskyy, to Washington on 28 February is a complete political and diplomatic failure of the Kyiv regime,” the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said in the statement.
Moscow often accuses Ukraine of harbouring “neo-Nazism” and used that as a pretext to start its invasion. It’s an accusation that western leaders and Kyiv call false and absurd.
“With his outrageously boorish behaviour during his stay in Washington, Zelenskyy confirmed that he is the most dangerous threat to the world community as an irresponsible warmonger,” Zakharova said.
“Russia’s unchanging goals remain the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, as well as the recognition of the existing realities on the ground.”
The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, criticised Donald Trump in unusually sharp terms for his behaviour during last night’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Oval Office.
“Diplomacy fails when negotiating partners are humiliated in front of the whole world,” Steinmeier told DPA, the German news agency, during a flight to Uruguay. “The scene in the White House yesterday took my breath away. I would never have believed that we would one day have to protect Ukraine from the USA.”
The UK must continue to work with both the US and Ukraine, Kemi Badenoch has said, according to the PA news agency.
The Conservative leader was asked if the offer of a second state visit to the UK for Trump should be rescinded.
Speaking during her first visit to Northern Ireland as Tory leader, Badenoch told broadcasters: “The state visit is from the king. He is the head of state and I think that is a matter for the royal family.”
She added:
We need to make sure that we continue to work with both our allies, both Ukraine and the US. We may disagree with the US on what happened yesterday but what is important now is how we move on from what happened yesterday.
That means focusing on the summit that the prime minister is going to be having tomorrow with European leaders.
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington was Kyiv’s diplomatic failure, and that the Ukrainian president rejected peace, and was obsessed with continuing the war.
The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, says the fracas in the White House on Friday was “regrettable and will make Putin feel like the winner”.
In a post on X, Farage added: “But this is not the end of the story, far from it. A peace deal is essential, and Ukraine needs the right security guarantees.”
Trump and Zelenskyy took the headlines after their heated clash in the Oval Office on Friday. Still, the contribution of JD Vance, the vice-president, to the explosion of tempers was a significant development, say commentators.
The meeting was muddling along fairly amicably before Vance piped up to accuse the Ukrainian president of being “disrespectful” when Zelenskyy asked Vance to clarify what he meant when he mentioned diplomacy with Russia.
“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country,” Vance said.
The US vice-president antagonised Zelenskyy again when he asked the president if he had “said ‘thank you’ once?” referring to the military support the US has provided over the past three years of war.
“You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict,” Vance snapped.
Vance’s outburst demonstrated his fierce loyalty to Trump and that, just like his boss, he is disposed to provocation and likely to conduct himself in an unorthodox manner in public.
“This was the flexing of JD Vance. Vance is different than Elon. For him to sit and take on Zelenskyy in front of Trump was a very big moment,” one US official, speaking anonymously, told Reuters. “He moved to support the president, and Trump loves it when people step out to do the confrontation that he usually does.”
Ukrainians, many of them hardened by three years of war, rallied around Volodymyr Zelenskyy but also expressed dismay about the future of US backing for Kyiv’s war effort as larger and better equipped Russian forces march across swathes of the east, Reuters reports.
“Trump and Putin are dividing up the world – that’s what I would say. I don’t know what will come of it,” said Kyiv resident Liudmyla Stetsevych, 47.
However, she and other Ukrainians interviewed by Reuters expressed hope that Ukraine’s allies in Europe would boost political and military support if the US dialled back its own.
“We are really very grateful to [the US] for the support we have received all this time and continue to receive, but our dignity and honour should come first,” said Alina Zhaivoronko, standing near a sea of small flags in central Kyiv commemorating Ukraine’s war dead.
“The Americans don’t know the real situation, what’s going on here,” said 54-year-old Ella Kazantseva, an east Ukraine native. “They don’t understand. Everything is beautiful for them.”
European leaders also leapt to Zelenskyy’s defence following the spat on Friday in an outpouring of support on social media.
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