Trump: Zelenskyy likely heading to White House Friday

President Donald Trump said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is likely to travel to Washington at the end of the week to cement an economic partnership with the U.S. that could offer some security for Ukraine against another Russian invasion in a potential postwar landscape.

“I hear that he’s coming on Friday,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday afternoon, speaking with nonchalance after several days of pressuring Zelenskyy. “Certainly, it’s okay with me if he’d like to. He would like to sign it together with me.”

“It’s a very big deal,” he added.

An administration official cautioned that the situation was fluid but that a Friday visit from Zelenskyy was possible “based on the current posture,” a sign that a joint economic agreement around Ukraine’s valuable mineral deposits was at hand.

Trump has spent the last week denigrating Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and blaming Ukraine for the war that Russia began. It’s been part of a public pressure campaign — against a wartime leader by the country that heretofore has been his most vital ally — aimed at getting Ukraine’s leader to agree to a proposal that would give the U.S. a huge stake in its rare earth minerals economy once the three-year war with Russia ends.

Zelenskyy rejected an initial proposal from the U.S. that would have required Ukraine to provide $500 billion in future revenue to America, effectively as reparations for military and humanitarian aid already received. But as Trump has sensed, Zelenskyy has few good options after three years of fighting, with the U.S. unlikely to approve a new financial aid package and Europe incapable of providing adequate security guarantees on its own.

Speaking about the agreement, which Zelenskyy has tried to water down somewhat from Trump’s initial proposal, the president Tuesday continued to frame the deal as Ukraine repaying the U.S. for past aid.

“We’re saying look … we want to get that money back,” said Trump, who again overstated the total amount of U.S. aid sent to Ukraine since the war began. The U.S. has sent nearly $120 billion in aid to Ukraine since the war began, but Trump falsely claimed again that America had sent $350 billion.

He also repeated the false claim that European aid to Ukraine has come in the form of a loan that was being paid back. That is not the case, but Trump’s repeating of the claim appeared to be an effort to justify his own interest in exploiting Ukraine’s economic assets.

Some Trump allies who have advocated for the minerals deal, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), have suggested that it will amount to a security guarantee because the U.S. will want to protect its economic investment in Ukraine.

Trump said that Europe, not the U.S., would be “largely responsible” for backing Ukraine’s military and deterring future Russian attacks if and when the current war ends.