Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting with Donald Trump at the White House Friday where the U.S. president is expected to claim victory for a rare minerals deal that will serve as "payback" for U.S. assistance to the war-torn nation. Trump has long sought to be reimbursed for providing Ukraine with weapons needed to push back the Russians, even thought the heads of state for Great Britain and France tried to explain this week that that's not how it's done.
In the Oval Office Thursday Trump asserted that European nations will "get their money back" from what they put into Ukraine's war effort, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that wasn't true: "Quite a bit of ours was gifted. It was given," Starmer said.
Earlier in the week, French President Emanuel Macron also corrected Trump's claims of payback: "To be frank," Macron said, "we paid 60% of the total effort...through guaranteed grants."
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Zelenskyy and Trump have traded barbs in recent days, with Trump calling the elected Ukrainian leader a "dictator" and Zelenskyy claiming Trump was living in a "disinformation space." But in a new analysis piece for CNN.com, Stephen Collinson wrote that "[Zelenskyy] has learned a critical lesson" in dealing with Trump: Give the U.S. president "the win."
And, so Zelenskyy is traveling to the U.S. to sign a modified deal that offers less than what Trump originally wanted, but still makes him look like the strongman he aspires to be.
"The first draft of the deal looked a lot like colonial-style pillage being forced upon a desperate nation; Zelenskyy refused to sign it, warning he couldn’t sell out his nation’s wealth," Collinson wrote.
"The latest version appears far less onerous for Ukraine," he continued. "There’s talk of a joint reconstruction fund but no mention of Trump’s initial claim for a $500 billion value — which was a perfect metaphor for a foreign policy vision that sees the world as a real estate deal."
Collinson explained, "[Zelenskyy] is styling the agreement as only a framework for a future pact — largely because he’s trying to leverage Ukraine’s mineral wealth for future US security guarantees he sees as vital to the survival of any eventual peace deal."
But "just because the rare earth minerals deal with Ukraine seems likely to fall short of the president’s expectations, it doesn’t mean that he won’t market it as an extraordinary victory for himself and Americans," Collinson wrote.