Zelenskyy knows he risks another Oval Office ambush – but has to be a willing participant in peace talks

There will be no red carpet or fly past, no round of applause when Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives in Washington DC on Monday.

But the bitter memory of his last visit to the White House will feature prominently in the Ukrainian president’s thoughts.

In February, he was mocked for not wearing a suit and told he didn’t “have the cards” by US President Donald Trump, before being walked off the premises early, like an unruly patron being thrown out of the bar.

Zelenskyy knows he is risking another ambush in the Oval Office but has to present himself as a willing participant in peace talks, out of fear of being painted as the obstacle to a resolution.

There was initially measured optimism in Kyiv after Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, because it appeared that no deal had been cut between Washington and the Kremlin without Ukraine in the room, as had been feared.

But that restrained positivity quickly evaporated with the release of a statement by Trump the morning after the night before.

In the heady heights of a meeting with strongman Putin, he seemed to have abandoned the one key thing that European leaders had impressed upon him – that there had to be an unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine as an absolute starting point to a permanent resolution.

Trump had apparently reached the conclusion that no ceasefire was required. “The best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine… is to go directly to a peace agreement,” is how he put it on his Truth Social media account.

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That sent shockwaves through Kyiv.

Many there and elsewhere believe Russia has no intention of stopping the war yet, and will use its military advantage on the battlefield to pressure Ukraine in drawn-out negotiations to give up more territory.

In the meantime, the slaughter of Ukrainians will continue.

It is the most dramatic of 180s from Trump, who before the meeting and after lobbying from European leaders had said he would not be happy if Putin failed to agree to a ceasefire, and even promised “severe consequences”.

Yet now reports suggest Trump is giving credence to the Russian position – in a phone call to Zelenskyy he laid out Putin’s proposal that Ukraine relinquishes even more territory, in return for an end to the war.

The Ukrainian president will have, no doubt, been distressed to see the pictures of Putin being greeted like a king on an American military base in Alaska. It is in direct contrast to how he was hosted on US soil.

In Trump’s orbit everything is a personality contest, and where he has very obvious deference to Putin, he has disdain for Zelenskyy. That makes the Ukrainian’s position very difficult.