Deference and disappointment as Zelensky leaves White House empty-handed

BBC:

One word sticks out in the Ukrainian leader’s description of his latest high-stakes foray into the nerve-centre of American power.

His White House conversation with President Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, was “pointed”.

But we don’t need to parse his semantic description of the exchange to know that this was not the meeting that the Ukrainian side had been expecting.

If the old British adage holds true that a week is a long time in politics, then Zelensky appears to have set a new record.

A short transatlantic flight, it seems, is now an age.

As they set off for Washington on Thursday, the Ukrainian side was in high spirits.

Listen to the words of Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament – effectively the country’s second in command – and a politician fiercely loyal to Zelensky.

In an interview with the BBC shortly before the president’s plane took off, Stefanchuk described the trip as a “very important historical moment”.

The meeting, he said, would leave the world in no doubt that Trump “finally understands that Putin is a liar, he can’t be trusted, and actions are needed to stop the war”.

And, he appeared to suggest, the crucial question for Ukraine – whether Trump would agree to its use of American long-range Tomahawk missiles – was close to being “solved”.

But it was as Zelensky’s flight was in the air that news of the two-and-a-half-hour Trump-Putin phone call began to emerge and, before its wheels were even on the Washington tarmac, we had the announcement that another summit between the two was in the offing.

The Ukrainians descended the steps, to be met with a low-key American greeting, and with their optimism, like a piece of waylaid luggage, lost somewhere en route.