Tensions between the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government had been escalating behind the scenes for the past week before they fully erupted into public view Wednesday.
Privately, Ukrainian officials were alarmed after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was told his meetings with top Trump administration officials could be canceled if he didn’t swiftly agree to certain demands. They worried about mixed messages, in public and private, from senior Trump advisers about whether the possibility of Ukraine’s joining NATO would be on the table in negotiations with Russia to end the war. And they were concerned when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told them in a closed-door meeting that the United States may withdraw a significant number of its troops from Europe.
From President Donald Trump’s perspective, Zelenskyy was showing resistance to what Trump views as reasonable asks of a country the United States has set up to receive more than $75 billion in military aid. He found Zelenskyy in no rush to make some compromises that U.S. and European officials have long conceded in private would be required in a peace deal. And he grew incensed over Ukraine’s public complaints about being excluded from talks between the United States and Russia about ending the war after Zelenskyy met several times with some of Trump’s top advisers.
“There is frustration,” a White House official said, accusing Zelenskyy and some other European leaders of trying to “denigrate” Trump’s peace efforts.
This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. and European officials and other people with knowledge of private meetings and discussions between and within the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal conversations.
Trump lashed out Tuesday, blaming Ukraine for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade and calling for new elections in Kyiv. After Zelenskyy countered that Trump is peddling Russian “disinformation,” Trump ramped up his rhetoric by calling Zelenskyy, the elected Ukrainian leader, a “dictator” who “has done a terrible job.”
Zelenskyy was elected in 2019, and elections scheduled for last year were suspended because of the war.
The escalating back-and-forth has raised concerns in the United States, including among some of Trump’s Republican allies.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told NBC News the war of words between Trump and Zelenskyy “feeds into Putin’s hand.”
Zelenskyy’s approach
After Trump won the November election, Ukraine’s Republican supporters in Congress and lobbyists hired by Kyiv in Washington advised Zelenskyy to demonstrate that his government was ready to compromise in peace talks and try to convince Trump that Russia was the main obstacle to any settlement, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
“The key was to convince Trump that Ukraine was not the problem,” one of those people said.
Putin has had little interest in negotiating a peace deal — and intelligence from the United States and allies indicates that his views are unchanged and that he eventually wants to control all of Ukraine. But Zelenskyy’s government recognized that Trump was skeptical of its cause and that he had a track record of avoiding criticism of Russia, two of the people with knowledge of the matter said.
Zelenskyy sought to show his government was flexible. With NATO membership a distant prospect, though the United States hadn’t declared that publicly, Zelenskyy suggested, for instance, that European countries could deploy troops to Ukraine as a security guarantee in a postwar arrangement.
His approach seemed to be working.
Trump delivered some harsh rhetoric about Russia, threatening Moscow with tariffs, sanctions and taxes on the sale of Russian goods to the United States and other countries if Putin didn’t negotiate an end to the war. He also tapped retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who has been sympathetic to Kyiv, as his Ukraine envoy.
Then last week everything changed.
Putin freed a U.S. teacher, Marc Fogel, who was imprisoned in Russia. The move allowed Trump to follow through with a promise he made during the campaign. Steve Witkoff, his envoy to the Middle East, met with Putin for three hours while he was in Moscow to retrieve Fogel, Trump said.
The next day, Feb. 12, Trump spoke with Putin, announcing afterward that the two countries would launch negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Afterward Trump spoke with Zelenskyy.
In announcing his team that would negotiate with the Russians, Trump left out Kellogg, who was stung, according to a U.S. official familiar with his response. Kellogg is holding meetings in Kyiv but wasn’t among the U.S. officials who met with the Russians in Saudi Arabia this week.
Tensions in Munich
As U.S. and European officials prepared to convene in Brussels and Munich last week — in meetings that would coincide with Trump’s announcing his rapprochement with Putin — some Trump administration officials tried to keep the relationship between Washington and Kyiv from fracturing.
Ahead of Hegseth’s speech in Brussels on Feb. 12, some State Department officials advised his team that he shouldn’t publicly say Ukraine won’t gain membership in NATO as part of a peace deal with Russia, according to four administration and congressional officials.
Hegseth’s speech didn’t follow that advice. He departed from a draft prepared earlier in the day to deliver a blunter message about Ukraine’s prospects for NATO membership than originally written: “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” he said.
His prepared remarks had said security guarantees for Ukraine “should not be provided through NATO membership,” according to three U.S. officials familiar with them.
Hegseth, who has said his comments about Ukraine’s possible NATO membership were made in coordination with the rest of Trump’s national security team, tempered his comments the next day. He insisted “everything is on the table” in negotiations. And while Trump told reporters Thursday that he hadn’t asked Hegseth to walk back his remarks, he also noted that Hegseth’s tone had gotten “a bit softer.”
At the same time, Trump said he thought Hegseth’s initial remarks “were pretty accurate,” further fueling confusion and criticism that the United States was ceding to a key Russian demand before negotiations had even begun.
Privately, Hegseth stunned the Ukrainians when he told them at a meeting with Zelenskyy that the Trump administration is considering drawing down many U.S. forces in Europe as the United States focuses more on the Asia-Pacific region and its border with Mexico, according to five U.S. officials and another person familiar with the meeting.
“Your reporting is 100% false,” Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot wrote by email in response to a request for comment about Hegseth’s speech, the advice he received from State Department officials and his private remarks about reducing U.S. troops in Europe.
“At no time was Secretary Hegseth advised by administration officials to avoid casting doubt on NATO membership — The secretary’s remarks were coordinated with senior members of the president’s national security team, and they supported the message he delivered top to bottom, full stop. In addition, the president himself reinforced Secretary Hegseth’s remarks concerning NATO membership shortly thereafter in his own public comments in the Oval Office,” Ullyot wrote.
Ullyot also said Hegseth “made no announcement on, nor timeline for, a drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe.”
But Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance delivered a consistent message during their travels last week — that Europe needs to take more responsibility for its own defense as the Trump administration prioritizes the southern U.S. border and the Indo-Pacific.
One security guarantee the United States is considering as part of a peace deal is to automatically grant Ukraine NATO membership if Russia violates the agreement, four U.S. officials said.
Such a provision would be aimed at addressing a key concern for Ukraine and its allies — that Russia would regroup and invade the country again, the four officials said.
Other parts of Hegseth’s Brussels speech, which he delivered with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov sitting just three seats away, also made Kyiv nervous. He said it is “an unrealistic objective” that Ukraine will return to its borders before Russia first invaded in 2014 and annexed Crimea, a declaration that was seen as a concession to Russia.
The day of Hegseth’s speech and Trump’s phone calls with Putin and Zelenskyy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was in Kyiv for a meeting with Zelenskyy that didn’t go well for either side.
Bessent presented Zelenskyy with a document that would give the United States ownership of half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which are critical to making a variety of technologies. Zelenskyy was taken aback by Bessent’s approach.
When Zelenskyy said he needed time to study the proposal, Bessent told him he had an hour to sign it or risk having his upcoming meetings with Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio canceled, according to five U.S. officials and another person with knowledge of the discussion.
The Ukrainians saw those meetings, scheduled to happen later that week on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, as critical for understanding Trump’s strategy for peace talks.
Bessent explained to Zelenskyy that an agreement with the Trump administration about rare earth minerals is a critical component of building a strategic partnership between the United States and Ukraine, which ultimately would contribute to security guarantees for Kyiv after a negotiated end to the war.
The Treasury Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Zelenskyy didn’t sign the document. In Munich, Ukrainian officials were initially told Zelenskyy’s meetings with Vance and Rubio were postponed, according to U.S. and European officials and another person briefed on the discussions. They were delayed but ultimately took place.
The rare earth minerals agreement remains in limbo.
After having initially said the United States and Ukraine are still talking about the proposal, Zelenskyy signaled he won’t agree to the current version because it wouldn’t protect his country enough.
Bessent said Tuesday in an interview with Fox News that he believes Zelenskyy will ultimately sign an agreement with the United States on Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, saying it would deter future Russian aggression after the end of the war.
The White House official said that “the Bessent offer is about acknowledging that Ukraine’s ability to defend itself so far was largely contributed to by American taxpayers.”
“That offer is about recouping some of that,” the official said, “and acknowledging that when there is peace, Ukraine has the potential to grow itself into a stronger economic position, through a partnership with the U.S.”
