Zelensky responded to the suspension of aid by pledging to return to the negotiating table and calling the Oval Office blowup ‘regrettable.’
Following last week’s ugly Oval Office spat between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump, and Vice President JD Vance, hawkish Republicans in Congress are calling on the White House to resume military aid to the war-torn country and return to the negotiating table to sign a peace deal.
GOP lawmakers’ renewed requests for continued negotiations surrounding an unsigned mineral-rights deal follows the White House’s decision on Monday to suspend ongoing military aid shipments to Ukraine until U.S. leaders believe the country’s leaders are committed to lasting peace in the region. The freeze pauses shipments of weapons, munitions, and military equipment that are currently in transit to Ukraine.
The White House’s order prompted Zelensky to pen a long social media post Tuesday morning in which he praised Trump’s “strong leadership,” called Friday’s Oval Office blowup “regrettable,” and urged the White House to “agree to a strong final deal” that will bring “lasting peace” in the region.
Trump’s decision to suspend aid invited a range of reactions this week from congressional Republicans, some of whom believe that pausing munitions and weapons shipments is a strong negotiating tactic to bring about an end to the conflict.
Pressed about the White House’s latest move during a Tuesday afternoon news conference, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S. D.) emphasized that the White House’s directive constitutes “a pause, importantly, not a stop” in aid to Kyiv while expressing hope that talks will resume so that the U.S. can help bring about bring a peaceful resolution to the three-year war.
In Senator Thom Tillis’s (R., N.C.) view, the U.S. should immediately resume negotiations with Ukraine and restart the flow of aid there while forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to play a waiting game.
“Let’s face it, Putin’s a liar, and any agreement with him that looks like a win is just a delay for the inevitable metastasizing of his brand of communism across Europe,” Tillis tells National Review. His message to the White House? “Get back to the table. Resume aid. Come up with a minerals deal that’s mutually beneficial and security cooperation agreements,” Tillis said. “That’s what I want.”
Tillis’s comments touch on a key point of apparent disagreement between the White House and Zelensky surrounding how to bring about an end to the conflict. During Friday’s Oval Office meeting, Zelensky at one point challenged Vance to explain why he was placing any faith in negotiations with Putin conducted absent strong security guarantees for Ukraine, given the Russian dictator’s track record of disregarding previous agreements. That pointed question prompted Vance to call Zelensky “disrespectful” for attempting to negotiate in front of the press. Things went downhill from there.
In a clear effort to repair relations with the White House following Friday’s tense confrontation, Zelensky thanked Trump on Tuesday for providing javelins to Ukraine at a critical time in the war and expressed hope that both parties can engage in “constructive” communication and cooperation moving forward. “Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be,” he said. “It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right.”
Zelensky’s Tuesday statement represents a step in the right direction for realist-leaning Republican lawmakers who have long been skeptical of the U.S.’s involvement in resolving the conflict, and who have spent recent days calling on the Ukrainian president to apologize for Friday’s confrontation.
“He’s almost there. I think he’s making incrementally better statements,” says Senator Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio), who is closely aligned with the Vance wing of the party on foreign policy. “He should just make a very simple statement: ‘I am absolutely regretful, the way I acted. I disrespected Vice President Vance, I disrespected President Trump, I disrespected American citizens and I apologize for that, and I’m ready for peace.’”
Ukraine-aligned Republicans in Washington have a different view of Friday’s spat. “Look, I’ve tried to figure out what it would feel like to have been the head of state for a country that has experienced a systematic murder, rape, kidnapping and torturing tens of thousands of people,” countered Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina. “And I actually think that somebody under that pressure should be given a little bit of leeway when it comes to expressing frustration.”
Pause or no pause in U.S. military aid to Ukraine, “we’re all worried about what’s happening over there” and “we join President Trump in wanting peace,” says Senator John Curtis (R., Utah.). The Utah senator told National Review on Tuesday that he is pleased the president reaffirmed last week his support for NATO’s Article Five mutual defense agreement and expressed hope that the U.S. and Ukraine “can get back to the table and talk about peace.”
“I don’t think anybody should be super proud of the way that went down,” Curtis said of Friday’s tense White House meeting. “To me it’s like, let’s put that behind us and now let’s go figure out how to get a deal done.”
Swing-district Representative Don Bacon (R., Neb.) has spent recent days urging members of his own party to have moral clarity on the reality that Russia is the aggressor in the conflict.
“Putin’s murdered every opponent he’s ever had, right? They’re thrown off the buildings, they’re poisoned, they’re killed in the Gulag,” says Bacon who represents one of three Republican-held districts Kamala Harris won in November. “The big contour is: What President Trump’s doing is good. We want peace. It’s got to be a just peace.”