After President Trump’s rebukes, President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to repair the relationship with his counterpart while also reaching out to European allies.
Marc Santora and Andrew E. Kramer
Marc Santora reported from Warsaw, and Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ukraine.
For months leading into the American elections last fall, the prospect of a second Trump presidency deepened uncertainty among Ukrainians over how enduring American support would prove in a war threatening their national survival.
After President Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous meeting with President Trump in the White House on Friday, many Ukrainians were moving toward a conclusion that seemed perfectly clear: Mr. Trump has chosen a side, and it is not Ukraine’s.
In one jaw-dropping meeting, the once unthinkable fear that Ukraine would be forced to engage in a long war against a stronger opponent without U.S. support appeared to move exponentially closer to reality.
“For Ukraine, it is clarifying, though not in a great way,” Phillips O’Brien, an international relations professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said in an interview. “Ukraine can now only count on European states for the support it needs to fight.”
The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said on Saturday that Europe must stand with Ukraine, and prevent the country “from having to accept subjugation.”
“The scene at the White House yesterday took my breath away,” he told the German press agency onboard a plane. “I would never have believed that we would ever have to defend Ukraine from the United States.”
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