Trump and Zelensky both suffer setbacks after Oval Office blowup

A meeting intended to be a display of unity descended into an on-camera clash, with Zelensky arguing that Moscow couldn’t be trusted to make peace, and Trump, along with Vice President JD Vance, indicting Zelensky’s handling of the war and failure to thank them for U.S. aid.

For Zelensky, the blowup ruined a critical opportunity to secure stronger backing for Ukraine’s long-term defense. For Trump, it was a damaging setback to his goal of forging a peace agreement between Kyiv and Moscow.

But both leaders also have a stake in salvaging their relationship—or at least papering-over their differences.

Ukraine wants a deal that returns much of the country’s seized territory and removes Russian troops from the battlefield. Zelensky also wants security guarantees that deter Russia from launching a renewed attack on his country, which even he says would be most effective if they came from the U.S.

Trump, for his part, needs Kyiv to agree to halt fighting as part of a peace agreement, though he has also said he would meet soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has insisted for weeks that Putin is genuinely interested in peace, alarming Ukraine and trans-Atlantic partners, who feared the White House was preparing to negotiate a peace deal closer to Moscow’s terms than their own.

The display of disunity between Trump and Zelensky, even before the planned peace talks are under way, risked emboldening Putin, who has voiced support for halting the fighting but on unacceptable terms for Ukraine and U.S. allies in Europe.

“No one is enjoying this more than Putin," said Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis. “I would expect that the Russians move quickly now, while the emotions are fresh to cut a deal for Ukraine’s capitulation."

How much damage the aborted White House meeting does to plans to forge a common negotiating strategy between Washington and its European allies remains to be seen.

Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, argued that Zelensky had damaged his relationship with the American president, maybe permanently.

“Unless something drastically changes over the coming days, Zelensky just solidified the fact that not only is he going to be sidelined in terms of potential conversations with Trump and Putin, he’ll be totally cut out," Rizzo said.

Trump has said privately on multiple occasions to donors at fundraisers that Ukraine cannot win the war and that it wasn’t in the American interest to continue supporting Kyiv, former campaign officials said.

Trump’s supporters said Zelensky needed to take steps to fix relations: “He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with, or he needs to change," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C).

In recent days, Trump had appeared to be moving in Zelensky’s direction, after the leaders of Poland, France and Britain visited Washington this week to plead Ukraine’s case. Trump had signaled openness to supporting European peacekeepers in Ukraine, a step that Kyiv and European governments considered crucial to ensuring Moscow didn’t renew the war, as it has done after previous cease-fires.

He had also backed away from criticism of Zelensky after calling him a “dictator" earlier this month. The mineral deal that the two leaders were planning to sign Friday was characterized as a win-win agreement by both sides—allowing Trump to say he had negotiated return payment on the roughly $120 billion in U.S. aid to Kyiv and giving Zelensky a commitment of continued American backing.

European officials have insisted in recent days that they were succeeding in moving Trump toward a command strategy against Putin. But Jeremy Shapiro, director of the U.S. program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said they may have made the common mistake of assuming Trump agreed with them about how to settle the Ukraine conflict.

“He’ll promise you the world. But 48 hours later, he’ll betray you without a thought. He might not even know he is betraying you," Shapiro said.

A Trump adviser said the president has vented about Zelensky for some time and doesn’t believe he is grateful to the U.S., adding that Trump for now plans to wait and see what the Ukrainian leader does.

As he sparred with Zelensky Friday, Trump outlined the choice the Ukrainian leader faces with typical bluntness: “You are 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 is going to be pretty, but you’ll fight it out."

At one point, Ukraine’s U.S. ambassador, Oksana Markarova, held her head in her hands.

After the 10-minute exchange, the Ukrainians went into a separate room before a planned lunch. Trump, huddling with his cabinet members and advisers, said it was clear there wasn’t any point in continuing the visit. Trump then asked national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to inform the Ukrainian delegation to leave the White House.

Lunch was never served to the Ukrainian leader. Zelensky also canceled a speech at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank close to the White House, that was planned for later in the afternoon.

Zelensky was conciliatory afterward, posting on X: “Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people."

He wanted peace, which required security guarantees to keep Russia at bay, Zelensky said in an interview on Fox News.

Asked if Trump was too close to Putin, Zelensky replied: “I want him to be more on our side."

Trump didn’t rule out another meeting with Zelensky, but didn’t back off his sharp criticism of the Ukrainian leader. He “isn’t ready for Peace if America is involved," Trump said in a social-media post, saying the Ukrainian president “disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office."

Zelensky wanted to return to the White House on Friday after the disastrous meeting in the Oval Office but was rebuffed, Trump later told reporters. Asked what Zelensky has to do, Trump said, “He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace.’"

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com and Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com.