With the cadences of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s charm offensive still echoing through Donald Trump’s West Wing, it now falls to the Ukrainian leader to see whether he can make similar progress wooing and flattering the American President….or any progress at all.
But amid all the trans-Atlantic bonhomie displayed at the White House during Starmer’s visit, one gnawing reality remains: Trump is still unwilling to offer Ukraine any real, tangible security guarantees as he inveighs Zelensky to sue for peace with Russia.
Trump’s dissembling on security guarantees remains the Achilles’ heel of his desire to end the war in Ukraine.
Zelensky and many of his European supporters disagree, and argue security guarantees for Ukraine must be inherent in any ceasefire negotiation, in order to provide Kyiv with confidence that there will be repercussions if Russia continues to bombard the country.
Trump claimed that the UK’s armed forces “don’t need very much help. They can take care of themselves”. He then turned to Starmer to ask whether “you think you could take on Russia by yourselves?”
Starmer gently suggested that Trump had not understood the nature of a conflict that was started by the Kremlin (Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Trump argued that the American geologists and construction personnel who will be “dig, dig digging” for lithium and the other rare earths that Zelensky is about to sign over to the United States will themselves constitute what he calls an “automatic” backstop.
Like French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, the Prime Minister gently suggested that Trump had not understood the nature of a conflict that was started by the Kremlin, not – as the US leader claimed last week – by Ukraine.
“It can’t be a peace that rewards the aggressor, or that gives encouragement to regimes like Iran… history must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader”.
Zelensky and Trump met in New York last September (Photo: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE / AFP)After Starmer bade farewell to the President, he took his carefully calibrated message to Trump’s favourite cable news channel.
In fresh language designed to flatter the US leader, the Prime Minister told the Fox audience that any agreement that ends the war will be an “incredible achievement by President Trump”.
Trump’s attention is now turning to Friday morning’s White House meeting with Zelensky at which the US side expects the minerals deal – “extortion”, its critics call it – to be signed.
Zelensky must now fight his own corner, and can only hope that Trump’s sunny disposition following several hours of English-accented flattery will carry over into one more day.
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