Inside the week that upended U.S.-Ukraine relations

Tensions between the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government had been escalating behind the scenes for the past week before they fully erupted into public view Wednesday.

Privately, Ukrainian officials were alarmed after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was told his meetings with top Trump administration officials could be canceled if he didn’t swiftly agree to certain demands. They worried about mixed messages, in public and private, from senior Trump advisers about whether the possibility of Ukraine’s joining NATO would be on the table in negotiations with Russia to end the war. And they were concerned when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told them in a closed-door meeting that the United States may withdraw a significant number of its troops from Europe.

From President Donald Trump’s perspective, Zelenskyy was showing resistance to what Trump views as reasonable asks of a country the United States has set up to receive more than $75 billion in military aid. He found Zelenskyy in no rush to make some compromises that U.S. and European officials have long conceded in private would be required in a peace deal. And he grew incensed over Ukraine’s public complaints about being excluded from talks between the United States and Russia about ending the war after Zelenskyy met several times with some of Trump’s top advisers.

“There is frustration,” a White House official said, accusing Zelenskyy and some other European leaders of trying to “denigrate” Trump’s peace efforts.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. and European officials and other people with knowledge of private meetings and discussions between and within the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal conversations.

Trump lashed out Tuesday, blaming Ukraine for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade and calling for new elections in Kyiv. After Zelenskyy countered that Trump is peddling Russian “disinformation,” Trump ramped up his rhetoric by calling Zelenskyy, the elected Ukrainian leader, a “dictator” who “has done a terrible job.”

Zelenskyy was elected in 2019, and elections scheduled for last year were suspended because of the war.

The escalating back-and-forth has raised concerns in the United States, including among some of Trump’s Republican allies.  

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told NBC News the war of words between Trump and Zelenskyy “feeds into Putin’s hand.” 

Zelenskyy’s approach

After Trump won the November election, Ukraine’s Republican supporters in Congress and lobbyists hired by Kyiv in Washington advised Zelenskyy to demonstrate that his government was ready to compromise in peace talks and try to convince Trump that Russia was the main obstacle to any settlement, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

“The key was to convince Trump that Ukraine was not the problem,” one of those people said.

Putin has had little interest in negotiating a peace deal — and intelligence from the United States and allies indicates that his views are unchanged and that he eventually wants to control all of Ukraine. But Zelenskyy’s government recognized that Trump was skeptical of its cause and that he had a track record of avoiding criticism of Russia, two of the people with knowledge of the matter said.

Zelenskyy sought to show his government was flexible. With NATO membership a distant prospect, though the United States hadn’t declared that publicly, Zelenskyy suggested, for instance, that European countries could deploy troops to Ukraine as a security guarantee in a postwar arrangement. 

His approach seemed to be working. 

Trump delivered some harsh rhetoric about Russia, threatening Moscow with tariffs, sanctions and taxes on the sale of Russian goods to the United States and other countries if Putin didn’t negotiate an end to the war. He also tapped retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who has been sympathetic to Kyiv, as his Ukraine envoy.

Then last week everything changed. 

Putin freed a U.S. teacher, Marc Fogel, who was imprisoned in Russia. The move allowed Trump to follow through with a promise he made during the campaign. Steve Witkoff, his envoy to the Middle East, met with Putin for three hours while he was in Moscow to retrieve Fogel, Trump said.

The next day, Feb. 12, Trump spoke with Putin, announcing afterward that the two countries would launch negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Afterward Trump spoke with Zelenskyy.

In announcing his team that would negotiate with the Russians, Trump left out Kellogg, who was stung, according to a U.S. official familiar with his response. Kellogg is holding meetings in Kyiv but…