Zelenskyy Courts Trump as Ukrainians Pay for Rift

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy flew to Norway to meet U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and European officials, hoping to prevent a deeper rupture with President Donald Trump. The stakes were immediate. Ukraine had lost drone connections after SpaceX restricted services, and it accused Washington of withholding air defense missiles and intelligence for its air alert system while Russian strikes continued to kill civilians.

The meeting aimed to ease tensions before Witkoff traveled to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin. It came after Trump criticized Zelenskyy over Ukraine’s efforts to inflict heavy losses on Russia.

A Strained Partnership, Measured in Lives

Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store and Finland’s President Alex Stubb gave Zelenskyy a warm welcome. Store said he was glad the group could “straighten out a few things and to agree that what matters now is to look ahead.” Stubb said progress had been made “under the radar in the past week or so” and that “the process is back on track.”

The U.S. blamed a technical fault for the air alert problems, and Zelenskyy said the early warning system worked again. “Hear when ballistic is coming, so we are thankful to American side. Now it works. It’s great,” he said.

But air defense supplies remain tight. Multiple European officials said the U.S. program to sell weapons to European countries for transfer to Ukraine continued to operate, but the supply of air defense interceptors still fell short. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “We haven't changed our posture in any way toward the Ukrainians. But certainly with things like interceptors, we want to make sure our guys have the most possible as well.”

Ukrainian and other European officials feared that Witkoff and the Trump administration increasingly saw Putin as a partner in peace and business. Trump put the burden on Kyiv. “Russia would like to get it done, but Ukraine has to want to settle this war. Zelenskyy has to want to settle this war. And if he doesn't, I think it's going to be a very bad thing,” he said. “Look, we have given tremendous amounts to Ukraine. We've got nothing back, other than high diesel.” The report said diesel prices had also risen because of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran.

Zelenskyy put it more plainly. “Of course, we're not losing this war, but we are losing people. And because Russia attacks, we're losing people and time.”

Civilians Take the Hits

The losses came overnight. Russian missile and drone attacks killed at least four people and injured dozens, including children. The attacks also struck a main highway during rush hour.

Andrii Pakhalovych, a coffee shop owner, said through an interpreter: “If Trump wanted to, he would have given us at least those weapons long ago so that we could defend ourselves, so that we could protect our power and heating plants. In a month, we'll have freezing temperatures. What are people supposed to do?”

The Case for Pressure on Moscow

David Kramer, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state and executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, told PBS NewsHour's Geoff Bennett that it was hard to know whether the apparent reset would last. Ukraine, he said, had suffered disruptions in intelligence provision and in Starlink and Starshield services, and Ukrainians had lost their lives as a result.

Kramer said Putin started the war in 2014 and on a full-scale level in 2022, and has refused to negotiate an end to it. Ukraine and Zelenskyy, he said, had repeatedly shown willingness and flexibility to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people.

He traced the relationship’s sharp swings: the Feb. 28, 2025, White House blowup, when Trump and Zelenskyy were essentially shouting at each other, followed by an improvement and U.S. sanctions on Lukoil and Rosneft, the two largest Russian energy companies. More recently, Washington’s rhetoric had suggested Ukraine was at fault. Kramer called the repeated shifts exhausting and unnerving for Ukrainians, and deadly, as Russia kept striking civilian targets.

Russia, he said, had dangled improved relations, including business deals and nuclear negotiations. Putin had also offered a possible summit in Beijing the following month, when Trump was due to travel there for a major international conference. Ukrainians would have great difficulty accepting a meeting between Putin, Chinese leader Xi and Trump on Ukraine without Ukraine at the table.

Kramer said Putin doesn’t view Ukraine as a truly independent state, citing remarks he said Putin made to President Bush in 2008 in Sochi. Putin, he argued, wants to eviscerate Ukrainian identity, sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence, and deny Ukrainians the choice of whether to join NATO or the European Union. He noted that Zelenskyy’s term had gone beyond its mandate because Ukraine declared martial law after Russia’s invasion.

Additional pressure on Putin, Kramer said, “is the way to end this war.” He urged tighter sanctions, action against the shadow fleet Russia relies on to fund its war effort, and measures against Russian banks, companies and individuals. He also called for military assistance to resume, whether through Europeans buying U.S. weapons for Ukraine or through direct aid. Congress, he noted, passed the Lindsey Graham sanctions legislation by 86-11 in the Senate and by a sizable margin in the House. Surveys, he said, showed Americans supported Ukraine, and pressure belonged on Putin, not Zelenskyy.

Kramer acknowledged that Republican foreign policy had changed, with America First prioritizing different issues. Still, he argued that supporting Ukraine serves U.S. national interests. Zelenskyy had offered assistance when Iranian Shahed drones were hitting American targets in the Middle East after the war there began, he said.

Why This Matters:

The facts show a gap between commitments and delivery. A broad Senate majority backed new sanctions on Russia, yet Ukrainians describe shortages of air defense interceptors and disruptions in intelligence and satellite services that Kramer says cost lives. With freezing temperatures a month away, as Pakhalovych noted, power and heating plants remain targets. Civilians bear the heaviest burden, and some can’t evacuate for winter. Through a rights-and-accountability lens, the question isn’t only who is willing to talk peace. It’s whether allies who say they support Ukraine will use sanctions, shadow-fleet enforcement and weapons transfers to raise the cost of attacks on civilians, rather than leave Ukraine to bargain from a position of vulnerability.