Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky’s history of discord — From ‘do us a favor’ to ‘you don’t have the cards’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was expected to sign a deal on Friday allowing the US greater access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. But that plan was scrapped after the two leaders’ heated engagement in front of the news media.

During the meeting, Trump rebuked Zelensky and said the wartime leader was in no position to negotiate. “You don’t have the cards right now,” he said. “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out, and if we’re out, you’ll fight it out and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”

Trump-Zelensky mineral deal

Zelensky wants the mineral deal to include security guarantees or assurances from the US but Trump has not agreed to that.

Sources told Fox News that during the meeting on Friday, the Ukrainian president was presented with minerals for security agreement by the Trump administration prior to the press event, “but the deal included no security guarantees to protect Ukraine from another Russian invasion.”

Trump, meanwhile, insisted that the deal was essential to repay the US for the more than $180 billion in American aid sent to Kyiv since the start of the war.

After the hostile meeting with Trump, Zelensky said in a post on X, “We are ready to sign the minerals agreement, and it will be the first step toward security guarantees. But it’s not enough, and we need more than just that.”

“A ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine. We’ve been fighting for 3 years, and Ukrainian people need to know that America is on our side,” Zelensky said.

This is not the first time that Zelensky refused to do something Trump wanted him to. At least five years back, in 2019, Trump was impeached over a phone call he had had with Zelensky. However, the US Senate acquitted Trump the next year. Here’s what had happened:

Volodymyr Zelensky became Ukraine’s President in April 2019. In July that year, a call sparked the House’s impeachment inquiry. But the problem dated back to 2016. Check more detailsof the impeachment here

Trump won the 2016 elections amid allegations of “Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and its interactions with the Trump Campaign.”

According to the Indian Express, a probe by American authorities claimed that Russia had hacked the emails of the Democratic Party and released them.

Trump, however, promoted the “conspiracy” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, claiming that “a Ukrainian company” was harboring a hacked server belonging to the Democratic National Committee, NBC news reported. He had reportedly said Ukrainians did the hacking to defame Russians.

Trump asks Zelensky for ‘favor’

In the fateful phone call in 2019, Trump even asked Zelensky to investigate the matter and return a server he believed was in Ukraine.

As per a transcript of Trump’s phone conversation with Zelensky shared by CNN, Trump told Zelensky, “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”

” I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike…I guess you have one of your wealthy people…The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump reportedly said.

This was not the only favour Trump had sought.

Donald Trump repeatedly pushed for Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, during a July 25 phone call, according to a transcript of the conversation released by the White House.

Hunter Biden was on the board of directors of a private Ukrainian company called Burisma. In 2016, when Joe Biden was Vice President, he pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who had been charged with investigating corruption allegations against Burisma, the Indian Express reported.

That probe was dormant and the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was perceived as blocking corruption probes in Ukraine by both the US and the European Union.

Trump wanted Zelensky to investigate Biden over this and discredit him before the 2020 elections. The US President allegedly attempted to leverage US military aid to the country in return for Zelensky launching an investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, over his position at a Ukrainian gas company, the Guardian cited Vindman, author of a new book, The Folly of Realism, as saying.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it…It sounds horrible to me,” Trump said as oer the transcript of the conversation.

Zelensky did not open the probe, the Indian Express reported.

Trump was indeed impeached for offering a quid pro quo in the hope of finding dirt on a political rival. However, Trump insisted there was “no quid pro quo”, The Times reported.

Zelensky had later denied that Trump pressured him to investigate Joe Biden’s son for his work in the country.

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House in December 2019 on abuse of power and obstruction of justice charges, only the third American commander in chief to be in that situation. He was later acquitted by the Senate.