How Ukraine's allies helped Zelensky recover his standing with Trump

Washington Post

4 days ago

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky got off the phone with President Donald Trump on Independence Day, his top aide could scarcely contain his relief.
''Wow, that was the best call with him we ever had,'' his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said after Zelensky hung up the call — and Zelensky agreed, according to a Ukrainian official who, like other officials interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.
The call felt so positive from Ukraine's perspective that it caught Zelensky's staff by surprise, the official said. 'The spirit was uplifted, but it is too early to celebrate,' the official said. 'We have to wait for actions.'
The Ukrainians know better than most how much fortunes can shift with Trump's mercurial moods.
In February, Zelensky and Trump engaged in an Oval Office shouting match that ended with the Ukrainian president's ejection from the White House.
The July 4 call marked a remarkable turnabout, leading to Trump's decision this week to offer about $10 billion worth of weaponry for Europe to purchase on Ukraine's behalf.
That shift culminated months of work by European leaders, Republicans on Capitol Hill and others sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause who gave Zelensky strategic advice about how to get Trump back on his side, including how to use the language of transaction and flattery that Trump appears to respond to.
'A lot of Ukraine's allies have been in contact with Zelensky about this, but also among each other,' a European official said. 'They're talking about how you talk to Trump.'
Zelensky also benefited from Trump's growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That frustration boiled over the day before Trump and Zelensky spoke. A July 3 phone call between the U.S. and Russian leaders was followed by the most intense Russian drone assaults on Ukraine of the war.
Trump, in response, has publicly accused Putin of offering him 'bulls---' during their conversations.
'I speak to [Putin] a lot,' Trump said earlier this week as he announced the new weapons sales for Ukraine. 'I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call.' And then missiles launched into Kyiv or some other city. After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything.'
The turnaround in the Trump-Zelensky relationship keeps open the flow of U.S. arms for Ukraine at a crucial moment for Kyiv, with Russia pressing what it believes is a battlefield advantage.
For Zelensky, it has proved to be yet another close escape for a wartime leader who has had many of them since Russia invaded his country in February 2022. Back then, he drew global praise for holding resolute in Kyiv and galvanizing a fierce defense that U.S. intelligence agencies and others felt was unlikely. Now, under very different circumstances, he may have achieved another unexpected win.
Trump's allies say that he hasn't abandoned his primary goal: ending the war as quickly as possible.
'I'm on nobody's side. You know the side I'm on? Humanity's side. I want to stop the killing of thousands of people a week,' Trump told reporters on Tuesday.
But the Trump allies acknowledge the president's mounting frustration with Putin and growing receptivity to the weapons-sales plan hatched among European leaders and Zelensky. The plan allows Trump to keep an arm's length from support for Ukraine, while still preserving Ukraine's strength enough to pressure Moscow toward a peace deal.
Zelensky said this week that he felt Trump was starting to see Putin in a less idealistic light.
'President Trump realizes that Putin is lying to him, and it is important that President Trump sees this for himself, not what he hears from someone else, but what he sees with his own eyes,' the Ukrainian leader told Newsmax — one of Trump's favored media outlets.
'We have supported all the U.S. initiatives on the ceasefire. I supported all of President Trump's initiatives, and he saw the reality. Putin just says one thing and then bombs.'
The patched relationship between Zelensky and Trump was not foreordained.
Policymakers and strategists from the U.S. and several European countries said that a coordinated effort to help rehabilitate Zelensky's relationship with the president sparked into motion even before the Ukrainian leader departed Washington on that end-of-February evening, after White House staff dined on the lunch that was supposed to be shared with the Ukrainians.
European leaders helped draft language for Zelensky to use to apologize to Trump. They brainstormed a ceasefire proposal acceptable to Ukrainians that Russia ultimately rejected. And European leaders who have cellphone relationships with Trump — he sometimes rings out of the blue — used their moments on the line with him to underscore that Putin threatened U.S. interests.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been especially helpful, two European diplomats said, using his long-standing — albeit sometimes bumpy — relationship with Trump to hammer at the idea that supporting Ukraine will help deliver wins for the White House.
The two leaders speak almost every other day, the diplomats said, calling each other directly for impromptu talks about the challenges of the moment.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has also focused on building warm ties, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz helped in recent weeks after he struck up a good relationship with Trump following their first Oval Office meeting in early June. Finnish President Alexander Stubb — whose golf game is excellent — also possesses the presidential digits. NATO chief Mark Rutte, who sat in the Oval Office with the president as he announced the new weapon-sales plan, has been on a Trump charm offensive.
After the February debacle, Zelensky calmed tensions in subsequent face-to-face interactions with Trump. At the urging of Macron and Starmer, Zelensky and Trump spoke privately, without aides, at the Vatican in April when both men were there for Pope Francis's funeral. That conversation helped reset the relationship, diplomats said.
They met again in late June at a NATO summit in the Netherlands, where Zelensky brought a wish list of weapons alongside a proposal: The United States could keep weapons flowing if the Europeans helped Kyiv pay, three European officials said.
The NATO meeting seemed to go a long way toward patching the relationship, the officials said.
One official described the meeting in The Hague as 'instrumental.' Another noted that Zelensky arrived in a suit-like jacket and shirt, after having been chastised for showing up at the White House in his more favored military-style fatigues. (Zelensky has said he'll wear a suit once the war is over.)
In their own conversations with Trump, European leaders sought to flip the script and assert that Putin was obstructing the president's ambitions to end the war. And last month, NATO officials made a concerted effort to deliver Trump a diplomatic win by promising a giant increase in European military outlays and tailoring the NATO summit to his attention span and his desire to declare successes.
A European diplomat said it was made clear to Zelensky that the NATO summit would focus on defense spending and putting on a 'Trump show,' and could be less focused on Ukraine than in years past. Creating a meeting that appealed to Trump would benefit Kyiv, even if there were fewer fresh promises for Ukraine in the NATO leaders' declaration, diplomats told Zelensky.
The bet paid off. Both Trump and Zelensky left their meeting in The Hague feeling it was 'very friendly,' the European official said.
Trump's softened tone could be seen in an exchange between the president and a Ukrainian reporter for the BBC during a news conference at the NATO meeting. The reporter asked Trump whether he would sell Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine. The president expressed sympathy to the reporter about the fact that she was living in Poland with her children while her husband fought on Ukraine's front lines.
Zelensky and the European leaders' efforts 'built up to this moment,' the European official said. 'It might have changed the trajectory. … There has been very careful work to help with this relationship,' he said.
In conversations with European leaders, Trump expressed frustration after speaking with Putin, who he said seemed intent on seizing more Ukrainian territory, a second official said.
In his July 4 call with Zelensky, Trump said that Ukraine would not change the course of the war by playing defense and needed to go on the offensive, the Ukrainian official said. When Trump asked if Ukraine could bomb Moscow or St. Petersburg, the official said, Zelensky replied, 'If we have the right weapons we can.'
The Financial Times first reported elements of the call.
Asked about the call earlier this week, Trump said, 'No, he shouldn't target Moscow.' He added that he wouldn't supply longer-range weaponry to Ukraine that would enable it to hit the Russian capital.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump had asked Zelensky about Ukraine's ability to hit Russian territory but said the question had been taken out of context. Trump was simply seeking information, not advocating that Zelensky do it, she said.
Now Trump has set a 50-day clock for Russia to reach a peace deal before imposing 100 percent tariffs on Russian imports and secondary sanctions against buyers of Russian energy.
New U.S. weaponry could reach Ukraine much faster than that, a second Ukrainian official said. Longer-range ATACMS missiles and other weapons 'could change the trajectory at least for the next six months, or maybe more,' the official said. 'If it is concentrated support for 50 days, that would be great.'
Still, Trump has zigzagged so often that some officials were reluctant to describe it as a change of heart.
'He seems to be realizing that he can't trust Putin,' the second European official said. 'So things are positive, until they change again.'
O'Grady reported from Kyiv, Francis reported from Brussels and Belton reported from London. Emily Davies in Washington and David L. Stern and Lizzie Johnson in Kyiv contributed to this report.