Clarke Ries: Trump pisses on Ukraine’s leg, Zelensky refuses to agree it’s raining

The most important thing you need to understand about Zelensky is that this isn’t his first time sitting across a negotiating table from Putin.

By: Clarke Ries

Just over a year ago, I wrote that the fat lady hadn’t yet sung in Ukraine. I was right. Ukraine has continued slugging it out with a former superpower since then, and has not only remained standing but accumulated further battle honours, including the shredding of a division of elite North Korean troops and the reduction of Russian frontline logistics to the humble donkey. The frontline has barely moved; Ukraine also now occupies a section of Russian territory, too. Russia’s gigantic Soviet-era stockpiles of materiel — tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery pieces, — are now believed to be effectively depleted. What remains is likely in such terrible condition that it’s only useful for parts.

The fat lady still hasn’t sung. But that unholy racket in the Oval Office last Friday was the Trump administration trying to drag her onstage by the hair.

A seemingly routine press conference at the White House devolved into a spectacle that is sure to become part of history: a tomato-faced Donald Trump shouting imprecations about ingratitude and deference at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky was in Washington, D.C. to sign the final draft of a mineral deal with the United States. I read the language of the mineral deal when it leaked, and stayed humble for the first 48 hours after its publication about my inability to understand its strategic value to any party in light of how little actual agreement the agreement seemed to contain:

“More detailed terms pertaining to the Fund’s governance and operation will be set forth in a subsequent agreement.”

“...all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets…as may be further described in the Fund Agreement.”

“...scope and sustainability of contributions will be further defined in the Fund Agreement.”

“The Fund Agreement will include appropriate representations and warranties…”

“In drafting the Fund Agreement, the Participants will strive to avoid conflicts…”

“The Fund Agreement will pay particular attention to…”

“The text of the Fund Agreement will be developed without delay…”

After a couple days without anybody else seemingly able to explain who the mineral deal benefited and how, I reverted to Jen Gerson’s heuristic that if it didn’t make sense, it wasn’t because I was too stupid to make sense of it, it was because the mineral “deal,” in its final form, didn’t meaningfully exist.

The genesis of the mineral deal was a classically Trumpian inability to conceive of any exchange of goods or services as not having a winner and a loser. In Trump’s worldview, the United States had received no payment for the military aid it had given to Ukraine under the Biden administration, and the United States had therefore been screwed. What better way for Trump to distinguish the new boss from the old than by proving that when he dealt with Ukraine, the American people made a profit?

The amount of minerals demanded by Trump, $500 billion USD, bore no resemblance to the actual dollar value of American aid provided to date. Estimates of the true amount vary depending on the method of bookkeeping (what is the value of stockpiled ammunition that’s about to expire: its replacement cost or its resale value?), but estimates rarely exceed about $106 billion USD over three years. For context, that’s about 4.6 per cent of the U.S. Department of Defense budget of $2.3 trillion USD over those same years.

You might reasonably ask why Ukraine would offer its cheek up for a backhand of that magnitude: if it’s a fair deal and not the opportunistic ransacking of a vulnerable country, surely the deal must contain something of equal tangible or intangible worth, like U.S. security guarantees protecting Ukraine from the Russian menace in the future, or major American investment in the Ukrainian economy.

Nope.

You might then reasonably ask why, if the deal was so one-sided in favour of the United States, it was Trump and Vance looking peevish and throwing tantrums on the day the deal was due to be signed (it wasn’t), and why it was Zelensky sitting there as unruffled as a certain oft-memed white cat.

The answer to those questions benefit from some knowledge about the two central characters in this drama.

The most important thing you need to understand about Trump is that his strength as a businessman isn’t his skill at making deals, it’s his mastery of marketing.

He is by intention an unsophisticate’s caricature of what a New York business mogul looks and acts like, right down to the gilded penthouse — but the ruthless, hard-nosed dealmaker who built a Gotham real-estate empire from nothing wasn’t Donald, it was his father Fred.

The son is not the father.

After inheriting, the son endured multiple bankruptcies that left him toxic to American banks and destroyed his industry credibility as a real-estate developer.

What kept the Trump conglomerate limping along after Fred’s death was Donald’s transition from buying, improving, and selling land to the mass marketing of Trump-branded goods and services. From tie clips to hotel rooms to business seminars, Trump differentiates his products by wrapping them in an aura of new-money swagger that relies on movie cameos, book deals, and reality shows in which he’s presented as the consummate tycoon.

Trump is not a master dealmaker, in other words, he just plays one on TV.

He ran for president as a publicity stunt, accidentally won and has been riding the tiger ever since.

His boast on the campaign trail last fall that he would end the Russo-Ukrainian War in a day was Trump’s mouth writing a very reckless cheque in his quest to be perceived as Dealmaker in Chief, and the fireworks coming out of D.C. last week were the byproduct of his increasingly desperate attempts to force Zelensky to cash it.

The most important thing you need to understand about Zelensky is that this isn’t his first time sitting across a negotiating table from Putin. Zelensky had tried to cut deals, even at political cost at home. But he bargained in good faith. In the leadup to February 2022, the Biden administration had repeatedly warned Zelensky that Putin was preparing to conduct a massive offensive, and Zelensky’s reaction had been denial. He’d believed in a path to peace via negotiation and made substantial political sacrifices to achieve it, reliant on his faith that Russia could be trusted to treat a partial surrender by Ukraine as a final outcome instead of an improved position from which to engage in further coercion.

The consequence of Zelensky’s credulousness was that when Putin struck again, Ukraine was less prepared than it should have been, and that will no doubt haunt Zelensky for the rest of his life.

With all this in mind, let’s go back to where we started: Trump and Zelensky sitting side by side in the Oval Office last Friday, ready to sign a mineral deal.

We now know based on Trump’s answers during that press conference that there was nothing in that mineral deal for Ukraine.

How much money is the U.S. going to put into the fund created today? “We don’t know … we’re going to be putting some money in a fund that we’re going to get from the raw earth [sic] that we’re going to be taking.”

Some of those minerals are in eastern Ukraine, not far from the front lines. Will you ask President Putin to withdraw his forces if there are U.S. interests there? (“A very good question,” the taciturn Zelensky observes.) “Well, we’ll take a look at the time. We have a lot of area, it’s a very big area we’re talking about … so I’ll see.”

Who would protect those minerals if they are U.S. interests? “The agreement will protect them. We’re signing an agreement.”

What if Russia tries to invade or [unintelligible] those spots? “I just told you, I don’t think that’s going to happen … if I thought that was going to happen, I wouldn’t make a deal. You know, they oughta focus on CNN on survival, not asking me these ridiculous questions.”

Translated into plain English, “We won’t be investing in Ukraine, we won’t be mining anywhere near Ukraine’s disputed regions, and we refuse to even account for the possibility that Russia, notorious breaker of ceasefires, might break a ceasefire. We’re here to pillage some rare earth and these demands for details are annoying.”

There’s your answer as to why the language of the mineral deal was so uselessly vague: the deal contained nothing of benefit for Ukraine, and had consequently been watered down over the course of multiple drafts in the face of steady refusal by Ukraine to sign — culminating in Zelensky, audible through a closed door, tearing a chunk out of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent when he travelled to Kyiv last week in an attempt to force the issue.

By the time it limped up to the finish line last Friday, the mineral deal had become little more than an agreement to agree, not the fat brokerage fee Trump was hoping to boast about extracting from Ukraine in exchange for his influence in ending the conflict with Russia.

Still, for Trump, it was better to have Zelensky’s signature on something, anything, because the alternative was admitting that he’d failed to force a single red cent out of Ukraine despite endless boasting about doing so where Biden couldn’t or wouldn’t.

So there Trump and Zelensky are, sitting side by side in the Oval Office, Trump trying to paint a smiley-face on a bungled extortion attempt and Zelensky looking like he’d spent the last week getting worked over by interrogators. A critical mass of reckless optimism stored next to a critical mass of bitter experience. Matter and antimatter.

Try, as you listen, to understand not just what’s frustrating Trump but what’s making him nervous. His intention with the mineral deal was twofold. Firstly, to bully an American windfall out of Zelensky. Secondly, to create a fig leaf of superficial reassurance that the mere presence of American civilians in Ukraine would prevent any renewed outbreak in the fighting:

“We’ll have security in a different form,” Trump tells a reporter at one point early in the press conference. “We’ll have workers digging, digging, taking the raw earth [sic].”

Trump’s intending to sit down with Putin after this and unilaterally commit Ukraine to a ceasefire that contains no actual security guarantees from the United States — he needs the fig leaf to keep public attention directed away from what a neuronically inert idea that is.

But the fig leaf is incinerated by the end of the press conference, by Trump’s own refusal to actually promise at any time in response to any question asked that Russian misbehaviour post-deal will provoke an American response, or that Russian misbehaviour was even conceivable to him.

How will a Trump-brokered peace deal provide long-term security for Ukraine? “I think once we make the agreement ... it’s not going to go back to fighting … let me make the deal first.”

“I don’t want to talk about security yet because I want to get the deal done. Security is so easy, that’s about two per cent of the problem. I’m not worried about security, I’m worried about getting the deal done. Security is the easy part…I don’t think you’re going to need much security.”

What assurances has Putin given you that he wants peace? “I’ve known him for a long time...I think he wants to make a deal…I’m in the middle of a mess.”

What if Russia breaks the ceasefire, a reporter asks for the umpteenth time, stubbornly refusing to leave the subject alone. “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now? They broke it with Biden because they didn’t respect him … they respect me.”

“The path to peace … is maybe engaging in diplomacy,” JD Vance says, tagging into the match.

At this point, Zelensky addresses the absurdities he’s hearing directly. “You know,” he says to Vance, “we had a lot of conversations with [Putin], bilateral conversations. And we signed with him, me, new president, in 2019…I signed with him, Macron, and Merkel, [a] ceasefire. All of them told me he will never go. We signed with him [a] gas contract. But after that, he broke the ceasefire, he killed our people … what kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about? What do you mean?”

Kaboom.

At that moment, Zelensky is telling the emperor in his own throne room that his peace deal has no clothes, and both Trump and Vance very quickly start saying the quiet part of their plan out loud.

Earlier, Trump was asked if he would continue to send arms to Ukraine if no peace deal was agreed upon. “We’re not looking forward to sending a lot of our arms, we’re looking forward to getting this war finished … I’m looking forward to getting it done quickly. Very quickly.”

Now that same point is made again, more brutally:

“You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty. You don’t have the cards … you’re not acting at all thankful.”

Once you look past Trump’s own claims about where his strengths lie and examine the unintermediated reality, the truth is that he’s the world’s worst deal guy. A complete fish.

A better negotiator than Trump would have understood why the weakest player at the table wasn’t acting thankful. Everybody on the Ukrainian side of the room knows Russia will use a ceasefire without substantive security guarantees as a chew toy. Any such ceasefire is therefore worthless to Ukraine, but Trump, being a terrible negotiator, has now made it clear that that’s all he’s willing to attempt to obtain from Putin, that he intends to close that deal rapidly, and that he considers anybody who thinks he’s settling for too little to be an obstacle to that goal, not a party whose interests deserve accommodation.

As one commentator put it, if Zelensky wanted to surrender, he didn’t need Trump’s help for that — he could have just flown to Moscow instead of Washington.

That is why, contrary to the opinion of many esteemed witnesses to last Friday’s goat rope of a press conference, it was not a loss for Zelensky. He did not fumble the bag, because the truth Trump clumsily blurted out is that there was no bag to fumble. There is no meaningful military, financial, or diplomatic assistance coming from Trump and there never was, only an attempt to do to Kyiv what he did to Kabul in his first term: put a bag over an ally and their problems and drop the bag in a river as expediently as possible.

Kyiv, however, is not Kabul. Afghanistan is a lawless vacuum between countries, culturally alien to America and located at the very ends of the Earth. Ultima Thule. Ukraine is the easternmost liberal democracy in Europe, and has earned Europe’s respect and sympathy for single-handedly fighting the battle against Russian imperialism that Europe has spent 80 years collectively preparing for. Russian T-72s are never going to roll through Germany’s Fulda Gap, and it’s because Ukraine is, at great national cost, destroying them all.

As the drama between Trump and Ukraine unfolds, European countries are also simultaneously dealing with the extraordinary shock of being told by Trump that they must now all fend for themselves. While it’s admittedly comedic watching wealthy, powerful nations awake to the need to do so, there’s no question that they’re perfectly capable of it: Europe’s population and GDP dwarf Russia’s, and its domestic defence industry is now roaring to life.

Putting it simply, Ukraine has other friends, and in the aftermath of Trump’s tirade, they’re already closing ranks around Zelensky. Given the scraps Trump intends to offer Ukraine, provoking him last Friday into appalling and galvanizing the entirety of Europe might very well have been the grand prize.

Likewise, consider the possibility that Trump was so boorishly insistent that Ukraine has no cards to play not because it’s actually true, but because Trump needs Zelensky to believe it’s true. If Zelensky doesn’t read the part Trump has written for him and abjectly accept terms of Ukrainian surrender negotiated between an apathetic superpower and his country’s mortal enemy, Trump’s only card is to follow through on his threat to abandon Ukraine.

This he did on Monday by restricting American intelligence sharing with Ukraine and (illegally, contrary to the act of Congress authorizing it) withholding U.S. military aid.

Per Trump’s increasingly predictable playbook, the military aid in question will be repeatedly and capriciously threatened, yanked, restored, and threatened again as he attempts to herd Zelensky over the finish line: an immediate ceasefire lacking any security guarantees.

Zelensky will in turn do his best to keep international opinion in his favour by pantomiming willingness to cooperate with Trump’s “peace” process, as he did on Tuesday by publishing a grovelling statement that conceded, on closer examination, jack squat. Zelensky said he’s willing to sign the current watered-down-to-nothing draft of the mineral deal (which he was already willing to do last Friday). He’s willing to agree to an aerial ceasefire (halting Russia’s terror bombing of Ukrainian civilians) and a naval ceasefire (Ukraine has no navy). He’s willing to move very rapidly through the peace process toward a “strong final deal” (i.e. one with security guarantees).

None of this matters. This is theatre playing out for the lowest common denominator. A pro-wrestling storyline with Zelensky and Trump competing to be perceived as the face and to cast the other as the heel.

Zelensky knows that U.S. military aid to Ukraine is unreliable and has an imminent, permanent expiry date: when he’s presented with whatever crappy peace plan Trump manages to extract from Putin. If lip service keeps the tap flowing a couple months longer, it’s cheap at the price. Trump, meanwhile, knows that U.S. military aid is the only leverage he’s got, and is praying as he’s never prayed before that when Zelensky is eventually presented with that crappy peace plan, Zelensky folds and accepts it — or that if he refuses, Europe’s assistance isn’t enough to keep Ukraine standing.

Because if Ukraine does keep slugging it out with European backing — if Russia continues to bleed a thousand casualties per day (more than 100 per miserable kilometre gained), if difficult-to-rebuild Russian oil refineries keep burning down, if Russian inflation and interest rates continue to run in the double digits — then Trump is facing the most humiliating possible outcome: that after Zelensky publicly snubs his crappy ceasefire plan, Ukraine might win, and in winning expose Trump to the world as something much worse than a bully.

Impotent.

So yes, of course Trump shouted at him. In frustration, to be sure. Galled at Zelensky’s sheer effrontery, no question. But also in panic.

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