The White House is reportedly demanding a public apology from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stating that President Donald Trump’s coveted minerals deal will not proceed without one. Zelenskyy has opposed the proposed “rare earth” agreement, arguing early on that it did not benefit Ukraine, and lacked security guarantees. Instead, President Donald Trump views the deal as a means of settling what he perceives as a debt Ukraine owes the United States for the approximately $175 billion in aid provided to support its defense against Russia’s illegal invasion.
Fox News’s White House correspondent Peter Doocy reported Monday afternoon (video below), “I have been told by senior officials here that nothing’s gonna happen with this minerals deal unless Zelenskyy goes in front of cameras and makes an explicit public apology for the way that he behaved himself, behaved in the Oval Office with that meeting.”
On Friday, to the world’s shock, Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Zelenskyy on-camera in what she called an “attempted mugging,” falsely accusing him of being ungrateful and insufficiently appreciative of all the United States had given his country — which was actually done under their predecessors, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, although that fact was never raised.
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Little more than one week ago, The Guardian reported that “shortly before Trump called him ‘a dictator’, Zelenskyy said he could not ‘sell Ukraine away.’ He was willing to work on ‘a serious document,’ he said, which ensured Russia did not attack Ukraine again.”
“Commentators,” The Guardian report added, “have described Trump’s aggressive ultimatum as ‘mafia imperialism,’ a ‘colonial agreement,’ and reminiscent of what the Europeans did in the 18th century when they carved up Africa.“
“’It’s as if we lost the war to America. This looks to me like reparations,’ Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist at the Centre for Economic Strategy thinktank in Kyiv, said.”
One elderly Ukrainian ice fisherman told The Guardian, “What Trump suggests is blackmail.”
Critics are again blasting the Trump administration.
“Reminder that the minerals deal is *itself* the prize we’re extracting from Ukraine,” reported The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger. “But of course ‘America First’ really means ‘Trump First,’ so the president’s ego must be assuaged before anything else can happen.”
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“Big surprise,” remarked NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders, “this is part of the authoritarian bullying and ritual humiliation playbooks.”
CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere says that “What Trump is demanding to sign [is] an agreement providing access to Ukraine’s minerals in exchange for standing in Putin’s way.”
Watch the video below or at this link.