The relationship between Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Donald Trump resembles a grueling tennis match. After months of exchanging blows, the Ukrainian president is cornered at the back of the court, saving points in extremis. The U.S. president wants to claim victory as the man who brokered peace between Moscow and Kyiv. And his strategy involves subduing the weaker opponent until they eventually give in. While Trump accused Zelenskiy on social media Sunday of being ungrateful and responsible for the war, the Ukrainian leader’s emissaries were saving another match point in a meeting with the Americans in Geneva.
The Ukrainian delegation succeeded in getting the White House to temporarily revise its so-called “peace plan” in the Swiss city. This document, which was made public last week, caused a major upheaval in Western foreign ministries and in Kyiv. The text was drafted in October by Kirill Dmitriev, a businessman and close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for relations with the Kremlin. The plan was received in Ukraine as a humiliation: “A loss of dignity,” in Zelenskiy’s words, as it is primarily a list of concessions to the invader.
The meeting in Geneva has allowed, for the moment, some of the red lines that Kyiv refuses to cross to be dropped from the plan. These include, among others — according to a leak published by Ukrainian media outlet RBC and the Financial Times — the points that would have forced Ukraine to cede sovereignty over Crimea and the Donbas region, that would have obliged Kyiv to reduce the size of its Armed Forces, and that would have required the Constitution to state that Ukraine renounces NATO membership.
The statement regarding the conclusions of the Geneva meeting indicates that the final plan and the debate on these issues, which have so far deviated from the script, will have to be decided in the coming days between Trump and Zelenskiy. In other words, a new game in which the Ukrainian president will have to save the day.
Minerals, a rabbit out of a hat
Trump arrived at the White House in January after an election campaign in which he promised to end the war in a matter of days and put a halt to what he called the wasteful military aid to Ukraine. Anticipating this threat, Zelenskiy pulled a rabbit out of his hat in September 2024, during his first meeting with Trump, then still the Republican candidate: he proposed that, if elected president, the United States would maintain its military support in exchange for control of Ukraine’s mineral wealth. In February 2025, a month after his return to power, Trump took him up on the offer: he demanded the minerals agreement in exchange for being open to negotiating a defense support plan for Ukraine.
The minerals agreement was scheduled to be signed at the ill-fated meeting on February 28 at the White House, where Zelenskiy, Trump, and his vice president, J.D. Vance, engaged in a heated argument in front of the media. The U.S. president responded by temporarily blocking all military assistance to Ukraine, including an aspect as crucial as intelligence.
Zelenskiy salvaged his position — as he himself acknowledged — through the advice he received from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Kyiv’s strategy shifted to a campaign of appeasement and flattery toward Trump, downplaying his mood swings. This, though, did not prevent further crises. For example, in July, the Pentagon decided to suspend the arms transfer that had been approved during Joe Biden’s presidency. Zelenskiy managed to defuse the situation after another tense phone call with Trump.
The Ukrainian leader hasn’t always been able to keep up with Trump’s maneuvers. Zelenskiy wasn’t informed of the meeting that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio were scheduled to hold last February in Saudi Arabia. The Ukrainian leader was supposed to travel to Riyadh, but canceled his trip after learning of the meeting, the first instance in which Washington reopened the door to international recognition of Moscow.
But the biggest bitter pill that Kyiv and its European allies have had to swallow was the summit with full state honors that Trump organized for Putin last August in Alaska. The Russian autocrat was received as a world leader and not as a politician wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Decisive Autumn
Trump has maintained a carrot-and-stick approach with Putin and Zelenskiy, though the sticks have been more prevalent with the Ukrainian leader. Relations became strained again last October, once more at a meeting in the White House. Witkoff and Trump made it clear to the Ukrainian leader that it was time to accept that he must cede the territories conquered by Russia. The meeting took place two days after Trump spoke by phone with Putin, with the intention of organizing another summit, this time in Hungary.
The European diplomatic machine was mobilized once again to protect Ukraine’s interests and convince Washington that Russia accept any peace negotiations must be preceded by a ceasefire. And Trump, for the first time, stood up to Putin: he suspended plans for the summit in Budapest and approved the first sanctions of his presidency against the Russian economy.
Just days after this happened, Dmitriev and Witkoff were negotiating the 28-point peace plan that has caused a diplomatic storm in Europe. Zelenskiy will seek to survive, once again, in another face-to-face meeting with Trump in the coming days.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
