Donald Trump brutally hit out at a reporter during Sunday’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for asking what he branded a ‘dumb question’.
The US President had arranged to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart on Sunday December 28, in a bid to try and finalise ongoing peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
For months now, neither side has been willing to accept the terms for a lasting peace deal, with Trump making continued attempts to try and broker peace between the two nations.
Yet, as Zelenskyy touched down at Mar-a-Lago to begin the talks, just hours after Russia had launched a deadly attack on Kyiv, it appeared Trump wasn’t in a celebratory mood as he hit out at a reporter for asking about potential terms of a deal.
During a press Q&A, one reporter asked about any security guarantees the US could provide to Ukraine as part of a peace deal, something Trump appeared less than impressed about.
“What a dumb question,” the president responded. “Nobody even knows what the security agreement is going to state.”
“There will be a security agreement,” Trump continued. “It will be a strong agreement. And the European nations are very much involved in that.”
Why exactly the President took such issue with a seemingly topical question has baffled many users on social media, especially given that security guarantees had previously been mentioned in Trump’s original peace proposal.
Even despite the blunt response, the meeting did appear to have gone well for Zelenskyy and Trump, and followed on from the Ukrainian leader’s earlier post on Telegram that stated he was optimistic about progress being made, as ‘a lot can be decided before the New Year’.
However, despite his hopes, he still cautioned that solutions depended ‘on those who help Ukraine and on those who put pressure on Russia so that the Russians feel the consequences of their own aggression’.
Following the meeting, Trump also took to Truth Social to offer an update and insight into how negotiations were going as he revealed he has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the discussions.
It is understood that the call marked the first time the pair had spoken since October, with both leaders having dubbed the talk ‘productive’.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Trump on Sunday to discuss a potential peace deal (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Negotiations for a lasting peace deal have seen both Russia and Ukraine at a stalemate in recent weeks, with Russia seemingly having agreed to compromise on very few of their demands, with Putin in particular refusing to agree to any deal that didn’t give him command of large swathes of land in Eastern Ukraine.
Neither Ukraine nor its European allies felt this was acceptable, and have instead been hard at work to try and find a more amenable middle ground.
Prior to the meeting, it is understood that Zelenskyy spoke with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer about the upcoming negotiations.
He wrote on X that the two had ‘discussed preparations for the meeting with President Trump, as well as all our contacts with European partners’.
“I informed him on the situation on the frontline and on the consequences of Russian strikes.”
European leaders have been adamant that any potential peace deal must guarantee Ukraine’s security and must not reward Russia for its aggression as the instigator of the almost 4 yearlong conflict.
