TRT asked me to be ready to comment, live, on the Oval Office meeting just before it blew up. I said Vance acted “infantile”. What I should have stressed, however, is that understanding Vance’s decision to blow up the meeting is key to understanding Trump’s strategy towards Russia, Ukraine, and Europe. (So, in this post the written analysis is the main thing, not the video.)

There is plenty of facile analyses of this clash. Many say the blowup reflected “chaos” in Trump’s policy on Ukraine and Russia, or that Trump has an “impulsive” strategy, that he “dislikes Ukraine”, he’s “pro-Russian,” or that the blowup was a “prearranged ambush” to “humiliate” Zelensky, or similar.

Too few consider the possibility that the rebuke is consistent with a well-defined USA strategy. What quickly becomes clear from listening, at face value, to multiple statements by Trump himself and his team is that they have a consistent strategy. This is clearly not the first Trump administration. This second administration is different in its unity and consistency on its Ukraine, Russia, and Europe policies.

What was the purpose of the “minerals” deal that Zelensky came to sign?

The weeks-long USA-Ukrainian clash over this deal has reflected their geostrategic differences on a peace deal with Russia. After heated exchanges and compromises, clearly the Ukrainian side was not pleased with the issues it had had to give up in the minerals deal. Nevertheless, Zelensky’s Council of Ministers voted to endorse the deal, and Zelensky went to DC explicitly to sign it.

Interestingly, just before he went to the White House, President Zelensky met with a group of Republican and Democratic senators, who had “… all told him sign the deal and don’t get into an argument.” (War on the Rocks, timestamp 7:58-8:19, 06.03.25). Alas, if one watches Zelensky’s public argumentation, from the start of the press conference, and his telling Trump that a deal without a US security guarantee won’t work, all of which is in contradiction to the deal he is about to sign, it is clear that he precipitated the breakdown. In my reading of the event, he seemed to not be able to restrain himself, seemingly out of an understandable deep anguish at being about to sign an accord contrary to his better judgment.

What did each side want in the “minerals” deal, and who got what?

Everything I found to have been said by the actors on the USA and Ukrainian sides as to what each wanted in the document is quite consistent.

On the Ukrainian side, the big one was a USA security guarantee for any deal Trump makes with Putin. The Ukrainians certainly welcome the willingness of European allies to extend security guarantees for any deal, especially the public commitments made by both the UK and France to contribute troops, but they were clear that they did not think this can substitute for a USA guarantee standing behind theirs. Related to this, the Ukrainians opposed taking NATO membership for them off the table. Another was a seat at the table for Ukraine and the Europeans during negotiations with Russia (Trump wants something more like a shuttle diplomacy between the two.) Related to this, is that the USA should not negotiate a cease fire deal without them. Still another was refusing to agree beforehand to give up any Ukrainian territory that has been occupied by Russia.

Obviously the USA disagreed and de facto or openly refused all these conditions. However, the disagreement over the security guarantee seemed to be the most hot-button issue between them. Trump flatly refused. His reasoning, as explained to the press was interesting, revealing a lot about his philosophy or method for negotiating a peace deal. He said that the two sides obviously hated one another and he had to go between the two to negotiate anything. (Read Trump’s own words, in the transcript below.)

The Trump concept of economic interests and security interests

He also said that they had to trust him, saying that it just would not work if he first gave a security guarantee, taking Ukraine’s side so clearly beforehand. He also said that the ultimate security guarantee “is the easy part” and getting the deal “is the hard part.” He said the guarantees can “come later.” It became clear that, in his approach, this minerals deal was to be the signal to Putin that the USA would have long-term economic interests in Ukraine and would, of course, in Trump’s view of how the world works, defend against any threats to those economic interests.

This approach is clearly seen as highly risky by Ukraine, which has been abandoned once before under what was an explicit security guarantee, the Bucharest Memorandum, extended in return for giving up its nuclear weapons in the 1990’s. As Zelensky recounted for Trump, no signatories of the Minsk Accords extended security guarantees after Russia’s 2014 aggression, and Putin broke them constantly

The text of the final document, the one the Ukrainian ministers approved, is known; it was published in Kyiv two days before the Oval Office meeting. (The full text of the Ukraine-US Minerals Agreement, European Pravda, Kyiv, 26.02.25). So, it is easy to see that Kyiv didn’t get its main demands, although the USA did compromise, in a sense, on one of them, agreeing to an explicit mention of a “security guarantee.” However, the USA did not extend one as a quid-pro-quo for the minerals deal, rather in Section 10. the wording is:

The Government of the United States of America supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace. Participants will seek to identify any necessary steps to protect mutual investments, as defined in the Fund Agreement.

So, the USA vision of security, to “protect mutual investments,” is asserted in association..

The idea of a mineral deal is reported to have originated in later 2024 from the Ukrainian side, not the Americans. Trump took it up and, as is his style, made hyperbolic public demands for an inflated amount of “$500b” and painted it as a means for the USA to “get its money back.” As usual, these things were a mix of truth and demagogic performance aimed at mollifying his MAGA base.

Even the idea that this deal would “pay” the USA for its wartime assistance to Ukraine, even retroactively, was largely hype. The British journalist, whom Trump occasionally calls, Piers Morgan, said he understood from speaking with Trump, that one aim was for Trump to be able to claim to the section of his MAGA that does not support Ukraine that Trump is not giving away anything for free, he’s making sure the USA gets paid back. However, as shown above, people involved on the USA side, including Trump, have explicitly and repeatedly said that the deal was also aimed at Putin, showing him that the USA would be long term deeply involved in the economy of the country.

Aside: Some have mistakenly complained that the idea Ukraine should pay for some or all of the armaments it receives is an unprecedented request for the USA to an ally during wartime. However, for example, In WW2, both the British and USSR went deeply in debt to the USA for their Lend Lease program and otherwise, and both only finally finishing paying off these debts in the 2000’s. One claim made was that the USA never asked Kuwait for anything in return for liberating it is factually wrong. According to a US government report (1991), Kuwait paid over $14b of the $54b total that USA allies in the Mideast and Europe contributed.

Vance’s “blowing up” the meeting marked the USA’s decision that the deal should not be signed.

Clearly, Vance had an option to deescalate the sense of confrontation he felt from the points President Zelensky had made. But, he did not. He insisted that Zelensky was being “disrespectful” by, in his words, trying to “litigate” differences “in front of the press.” However, there is another aspect to this, in that the points Zelensky was making, especially his telling a story of how clear security guarantees must be given by the USA before agreeing to any peace deal or any ceasefire, was a point that had already been settled between the two parties. It had been compromised on and language included in the agreement that Ukraine had agree to sign. So why was Zelensky now arguing this point in front of the press, explicitly trying to appeal to Trump, to explicitly try to convince him that these guarantees were necessary.

To Vance, and then to Trump too, this looked like Zelensky was reneging on the deal, and trying to put Trump on the spot publicly, taking advantage of his invitation to speak from the Oval Office together. Vance called it an “attempt to litigate” this in front of the US public. Indeed, any hint of such intentions would be insured to get any president angry, and most especially Trump.

However, more substantively, Vance and Trump realized (if not earlier, then clearly at this point) that although the Ukrainian Cabinet had voted to accept Trump’s conditions for him to go on and conduct negotiations with the Russians, the Ukrainian side had not really accepted or reconciled with what this means for their homeland, they had not gotten to a place where they were willing to really trust Trump, that his way would work with Russia.

If Zelensky so clearly argued and appealed against the mineral deal he was about to sign, then it had to be assumed by the US side that if Trump went off and negotiated a ceasefire, that the Ukrainian side could end up rejecting it, This would tank all of Trump’s efforts, undermining whatever he had reassured Putin about what the Ukrainians were or were not ready to accept, and with it his plan for ending the war and his larger plans for dealing with Russia going forward would also be upset. So, no, Zelensky was sent away. Trump and Vance were of one mind that Ukraine had to absolutely be on board their plan before proceeding. Now they would have to find a way to convince the Ukrainians of what the US side sees as a strategic necessity.

In Trump’s clear, often repeated words after the Oval Office events, “He’s not ready!” – meaning Zelensky is not ready to give in to Trump’s terms. Trump’s repeated, consistent, one-point argument to Zelensky has been that he should genuinely give up his several preconditions for a ceasefire and peace negotiations with Russia because “You don’t have the cards!” and “You are not winning, he (Putin) is winning.” This means, obviously, that the US side is convinced that Ukraine’s persistent belief it can insist on such preconditions or somehow go on to halt or reverse Russia’s battlefield advances are illusions.

One can disagree with Trump’s assessment, but if we are interested in understanding what was going on in the Oval Office, it is not difficult to see why Vance and Trump decided that the signing should not take place and Zelensky and his team should leave. They became convinced by what Zelensky was publicly lobbying for that the Ukrainian side had not really reconciled with the content of the “minerals” deal, by which I mean not so much with what was actually in it, but what was not in it.

A proforma “minerals” deal was good enough for Trump’s purpose

Not to put too fine a point on this, but, as I explained to TRT, the actual content of the document to be signed was very simply sketched out, even vague. It explicitly required that further negotiations take place to sort out remaining issues to do with the joint “fund” they would set up to handle future investments in minerals, LNG terminals, with how the income would be handled, etc..

However, as I told TRT, Trump obviously did not care that it was so vague and preliminary, and I saw it as a “proforma” deal. Why? The reason has to do, first, with what it did not include, not what was included. It did not include the Ukrainian demands, Ukraine’s preconditions for Trump beginning negotiations, which Trump’s plan rejects. Clearly, Ukraine has little leverage in all of this. The superpower supporting their national war of resistance was insisting on making a peace deal on their behalf and that, essentially, they should accept the superpower’s approach and conditions or else lose the superpower’s absolutely essential material support.

Here, I am not saying that Zelensky was incorrect about any of his points. Rather, my point is that the American side was under the impression that the Ukrainian side had agreed to adhere to Trump’s rules and methods to end the war. Looking at the videos, Zelensky seems to me deeply worried about what he is there to agree to, signing away a big part of his country’s economic leverage, with no security guarantee quid pro quo included. However, in all this, he is constrained to trust Trump, with whom he and his nation have, to put it mildly, a complicated history.

On the issue of security guarantees

I should note (more in a future post) that there are military experts who area less worried about security guarantees at this point.

Retired-General David Petraeus, who is strongly pro-Ukraine, has been saying that the issue of a security guarantee for any future ceasefire or peace deal is not so difficult, including NATO involvement in some fashion, USA backing of all this, and the supply of a sufficient number of troops to enforce any peace deal, etc., will not be a significant problem under the plan Trump is pursuing. It should be noted many thought Petraeus would be Kamala Harris’s Secretary of State, so his is clearly not a Trump-camp point of view.

Indications of a Trump Grand Strategy

Finally, my assertion to TRT that all this should be “pretty clearly” seen as part of a larger Trump attempt at a new USA grand strategy, which I characterized as aiming for some version of a USA-Russia entente. This seems to hold up. However, much of what Trump has in mind for this, as far as Russia’s future role in the Mideast, in the oil market (with the Saudis, and USA), and crucially, vis-a-vis Chine, are aspects that have yet to be much revealed. .

Appendix 1. Trump’s responds to Polish reporter that he does not align with Putin, or anyone, for negotiations to work

The Press: I already mentioned Poland,

39:43

I’d be so tough. But you’re never going to get a deal that way. So that’s the way it goes. All right, one more question. [Return to main text location]