WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not want to make peace after an Oval Office meeting between the pair ended in shambles on Friday, cutting short the wartime leader’s highly anticipated visit to the White House. The meeting was supposed to feature the signing of a minerals deal tying the two nations together long-term. 

But as Zelenskyy’s vehicle pulled out of the White House gates around 1:40 p.m., signaling the cancelation of a planned joint press conference – significant questions remained about the future of U.S. relations with Ukraine — and potentially Europe more broadly — as well as Trump’s effort to bring a swift end to the three-year-old war with Russia. 

Leaving the White House to travel to his Mar-a-Lago resort for the weekend on Friday afternoon, Trump told reporters that Zelenskyy was “looking for something I’m not looking for,” adding that the Ukrainian leader did not come into the meeting wanting to make peace with Russia. 

“He’s looking to go on and fight, fight, fight,” Trump said of Zelenskyy. 

The U.S. president said he wanted an “immediate” ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. 

“Either we’re going to end it or let him fight it out, and if he fights it out, it’s not going to be pretty because without us, he doesn’t win,” Trump said. 

Asked if he wants the Ukrainian leader gone from his position, Trump responded that he wants “anybody who is going to make peace.” 

Zelenskyy said earlier in the Oval Office that he wanted to end the war and interjected to say “with guarantees” when Trump said his Ukrainian counterpart didn’t want a ceasefire. 

Zelenskyy and other European leaders – including those from France and the U.K. – have been pushing Trump to offer security guarantees to Ukraine to deter Russia from invading again if a deal to end the war is reached. Trump has argued that the minerals deal itself was a guarantee and that he wasn’t willing to give “beyond very much” when it came to others.  

In a post on X after he left the White House, Zelenskyy wrote: “Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people. Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.” 

The visit unraveled during the first planned event of the day: an Oval Office sit-down that began just after 11:30 a.m. and saw the media ushered out just before 12:30 p.m. About 45 minutes later, Trump put out a statement on his social media site Truth Social, saying that the Ukrainian leader “can come back when he is ready for Peace.” 

Zelenskyy was in Washington to sign an agreement with Trump that would have given the U.S. access to revenue from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, something the U.S. president argued would provide Ukraine with a certain level of security that America was invested in its future as well as help pay back American taxpayers for the money and equipment the U.S. has given to aid Ukraine's defense. It was intended to be a notable step forward in Trump’s full-force push since taking office to end the war in Ukraine.

But tensions in the Oval Office meeting came to a boiling point when Vice President JD Vance, one of the most vocal critics of U.S. policy toward Ukraine during his time in the Senate, brought up diplomacy as key to ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. Zelenskyy hit back at the idea, citing commitments Russia has reneged in the past on the world stage. 

That sparked a heated exchange that escalated seemingly by the minute, with Vance telling the Ukrainian leader that he should be thanking the U.S. for support and not going on a “propaganda tour” to “litigate this in front of the American media.” 

Trump told Zelesnkyy that his country was in a “bad place right now” and that he had “no cards” without the support of the U.S.

“You are gambling with World War III,” Trump said. “And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have.”

After the press was escorted out of the Oval Office, the two leaders were set to have lunch together with their wider teams before holding a joint press conference. Both were canceled. Zelenskyy departed without the critical minerals deal that was thought to be crucial to the future of U.S. support for his country’s war effort. 

Before the meeting's rhetoric escalated, Zelenskyy said he believed the U.S. was on Ukraine’s side while Trump argued he was not aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin 

“I'm aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world,” Trump said.