Just shy of two weeks ago, President Trump spoke with assurance during a media event in the Oval Office with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that negotiations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were in a good place, and that U.S./Ukraine minerals deal could be signed shortly. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent piped up later on Apr. 17 that the timeline was looking closer to the 26th.
The images of the two leaders’ last meeting in D.C., with Zelensky causing a commotion over the president’s and Vice President JD Vance’s responses to his strident statements during their sit-down, then departing from the White House without signing the deal, are fresh in many Americans’ minds. It didn’t help things, as my colleague Jennifer Van Laar wrote, when the leader of Ukraine tweeted out his opinion on when the war with Russia would stop.
Trump was not…
