Trump breaks with Zelensky and delivers letters to Putin

In their first meeting at the White House, on February 28, 2025, the dealer Donald Trump told Volodymyr Zelensky to show gratitude and not demand anything from the United States, since he did not have “the cards” in his war of resistance against the Russian invasion of 2022. A year and a half later, he has handed all his aces to the enemy, Vladimir Putin, in exchange for an injection of diesel that may temporarily reduce its price, but that may not serve to reverse a Republican electoral catastrophe on November 3.

Since he was expelled from that meeting, scolded on camera by Vice President J.D. Vance, the Ukrainian president has tried to surf the contradictions, manias and outbursts of his American counterpart. In order not to enrage his ally, he changed the military outfit for the suit and his claims for praise in successive visits to the Oval Office: first in the company of his European allies, in October 2025, and then alone, this July, when he met for the last time with Trump before attending the funeral of Senator Lindsay Graham, one of his greatest allies on Capitol Hill.

But his praise for Trump, his openness to dialogue with Putin, an energy truce or calling elections in the event of a ceasefire, among other concessions, have not been enough for Moscow to stop bombing Kyiv, nor to win the support of the leader of the world's leading power. In the last week, there has been a total rupture between the two leaders, after the treacherous agreement by which the US will buy hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel from Russia, which will allow the Kremlin to finance its war machine.

Zelensky claimed to feel “betrayed” by his “strong partner,” who not only blamed him for the price of energy for his attacks on Russian refineries and told Ukrainians they should elect another leader, but has also withdrawn his support on the battlefield: he suddenly paused intelligence sharing and limited the Starlink satellite network, essential for intercepting Russian drones, whose speed has not yet been restored.

American aid remains essential for the Ukrainian resistance, the first line of defense of a Europe threatened by the Russian advance. When Trump came to the White House, the US stopped donating weapons and began demanding Kyiv and its Western allies pay for them. If his Administration goes one step further and permanently suspends its military assistance, Ukraine will have no one to buy Patriot interceptor missiles from, the only system it has access to to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, among other weapons.

In reality, Trump's contempt for Zelensky goes back a long way, as does his admiration for Putin. In July 2019, two months after his election as president of Ukraine, the New Yorker called him to ask him to investigate interference by his future rival in the presidential elections, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter, who had worked at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. In that call, he conditioned military aid of $391 million approved in Congress on the opening of that investigation, something that Zelensky rejected.

Democrats accused Trump of using his position of power to obtain information from a political adversary from a foreign government, something prohibited by federal law, and the scandal led to the president's first impeachment trial on Capitol Hill.

As then, the current disagreements between Trump and Zelensky now occur in a context of elections, to which the Republican side arrives with little chance of maintaining Congress, in charge of approving military assistance packages. In this context, Trump is looking for a scapegoat in the Ukrainian leader to hold responsible for the increase in energy prices, which have taken diesel to historic highs.

However, almost five years have passed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine – in which, in any case, the aggressor is Russia – and the rise in prices this year is not only due to Ukrainian attacks against Russian refineries. There is a clear correlation between the war in Iran, which led to the blockade of Hormuz, and the rise in gasoline prices.

To score an electoral victory, Trump announced last week that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an “energy ceasefire.” Zelensky reacted with surprise, stating to the media that he was not aware of this truce, but stressing that he was willing to agree to it if Russia agreed and if the US offered guarantees. Putin responded the next day with a new bombing in Zaporizhzhia, which killed 22 people, including four children. But, as he has done since the beginning of the conflict, Trump blamed Zelensky for the lack of agreement.

Following the Kremlin's silence on the ceasefire and Trump's successive betrayals in the last week, Zelensky defied the supposed truce on Thursday and announced that he was going to resume his attacks against Russian refineries: "The restriction is over, we are done," he told the Financial Times newspaper. On Thursday, Russia reported a Ukrainian drone attack on the Ryazan refinery, southeast of Moscow.

In the latest chapter of the conflictive relationship between Trump and Zelensky, the White House resident described the return to hostilities as a “shame,” insisted that they are driving up “the world price of oil,” and repeated a phrase he has uttered repeatedly in the last year and a half: “I find it more difficult to deal with Zelensky than with Putin.”