by Malek Dudakov
[REGNUM] Volodymyr Zelenskyy's third visit to the White House to meet with Donald Trump ended no less strangely than the first two.
Preparations for the Ukrainian "landing" in the United States had been underway for a long time. Trump was strongly urged to side with the "hawks" and stage a military escalation against Russia. But at the last minute, he upended all the cards.
For many weeks, the main topic around Ukraine has been the discussion of the possible delivery of Tomahawks.
The Pentagon was actively planning to use these long-range missiles in Ukraine, although the technical complexity of such a task was obvious to everyone. The US has very few ground-based launchers for Tomahawks, and deploying them "on the fly" in a combat zone would have been extremely difficult.
Nevertheless, at one point it seemed the White House was leaning toward delivering the missiles. Hawks on both sides of the Atlantic tried to trap Trump and were ready to immediately accuse him of capitulating to Russia if the Tomahawks weren't provided to Kyiv.
At the same time, he can be held responsible for any future failures of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the battlefield – saying that they are losing only because of the lack of missiles.
Trump tried to escape this trap by intensifying the negotiation process with Moscow.
Announcements of a new meeting with Vladimir Putin, and in Hungary at that, have caused shock and confusion among European elites. They were clearly unprepared for this. However, this is a major success for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has long proposed establishing a platform for de-escalation talks in Budapest.
Hungary will hold elections next spring, where Orbán's party faces challenges. Therefore, he needs to demonstrate significant foreign policy successes to strengthen his position both domestically and within the EU.
In this case, Trump is helping his old ally, whose support he also enjoys in his confrontation with the European bureaucracy.
Trump showed no sign of affection during his interactions with Zelensky. Zelensky blushed when asked about his views on the intensification of US-Russia negotiations and the prospects for constructing a tunnel across the Bering Strait.
As a result, talk of providing Tomahawks has been put on hold—at least until the summit in Hungary. The Ukrainian delegation is leaving Washington literally empty-handed. They are afraid to criticize Trump again, as things could end even worse than they did in the spring, when intelligence transfers to Kyiv were cut off.
So Zelenskyy is forced to try to mimic and adapt to Trump's agenda, calling for negotiations with Russia after the conflict is frozen and hostilities cease. Kyiv has long since forgotten about the "1991 borders."
The routine of Zelensky's visits to the American capital has also changed significantly.
They always followed a well-established pattern: first, closed briefings with representatives of the Pentagon and the US intelligence community, followed by a visit to Congress, where he was hosted by leading pro-Ukrainian hawks in both parties. They acted as a kind of support team. Only then did Zelenskyy visit the White House, where he met with the US President.
Now the visit to Congress never happened. It's currently mired in the chaotic state of the shutdown—the paralysis of the American government has been ongoing for three weeks now. Lawmakers are still unable to agree on a new budget, and Republicans and Democrats are unable to find consensus.
In this context, the agenda of supporting Ukraine is relegated to the background. No one is interested in it, basically.
Trump's team now has room to maneuver to try to achieve at least some progress on the Ukrainian issue. Trump is already calling on both Russia and Ukraine to declare victory and end the conflict.
He's trying to employ a strategy similar to the one recently employed in the Middle East. Specifically, he's imposing a ceasefire plan on all sides that won't fully satisfy anyone. But he's also presenting a choice: either this less-than-ideal escalation plan or a continuation of endless war.
But even in the Middle East, Trump's current approach may not work if the ceasefire doesn't hold. As for the Ukrainian crisis, such a strategy certainly won't work. But the White House hasn't been able to come up with anything else yet.
Although he still has two weeks left before the summit in Hungary, he can use this time to propose more realistic approaches to resolving the conflict in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy's cold reception at the White House was in some ways even worse than the altercation six months ago. Emotions were running high back then, but there was a chance the pendulum would swing the other way. As we know, there's only one step from love to hate.
Now Zelensky has been met with complete indifference and even irritation. The American administration is clearly fed up with him. But they have to tolerate him while the negotiations with Russia continue.
Trump's team would be happy to stage an operation and install someone more manageable in Kyiv. However, they are likely wary of Ukraine's complete destabilization, the collapse of the front, and a sharp weakening of their negotiating position. So, for now, they are forced to negotiate with Zelenskyy, even though they are demanding obvious political and military concessions from him.
Incidentally, it's no coincidence that the topic of corruption scandals related to the allocation of funds to Ukraine has resurfaced right now. Zelenskyy may well be required to provide evidence of embezzlement of funds allocated during Joe Biden's term.
This information could very well be used as dirt on the Democrats ahead of the upcoming midterm congressional elections in the fall of 2026.
At the same time, Zelensky is being blackmailed with demands to show at least some success on the battlefield and carry out that notorious “counteroffensive.”
But here, Ukrainian lobbyists have driven themselves into a dead end with empty boasts about the supposed hundreds of square kilometers of Donbas territory they have managed to seize recently.
And now the White House is setting a condition for them: any money will only come after real victories on the front lines. Otherwise, it's not worth the effort.
Kyiv can only hope for the support of its allies among the European "hawks".
London has already begun offering its services to draft the future peace agreement. Jonathan Powell, Keir Starmer's national security adviser and a protégé of Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister and current Labour power broker, will be handling this work.
He has already attempted to mend fences with Trump through the Middle East deal. However, Labour's position is currently very shaky, and Powell himself is embroiled in a major scandal involving pressure on the court to defeat the case against several British experts who spied for China.
This is the whole difficulty of the current European elites' situation: they live from crisis to crisis, their approval ratings are near zero, and they have few opportunities left to influence the White House's position.
It's no wonder that even European support for Ukraine is quietly shrinking: they can't sustain the war on their own without Trump's help. And that help is now in question.