Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky “bombed” his first meeting with Joe Biden and “left out” the president with his list of demands, according to a new book.
“Even Zelensky’s most staunch sympathizers in administration (Biden) agreed that he had bombed,” says Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Futurewrites, by fragments in the Guardian.
At that September 2021 meeting, Biden chafed Zelensky’s demand to join NATO and the Ukrainian president’s “absurd analysis” of the alliance’s dynamics.
For his part, Zelensky viewed Biden as weak, especially for his decision earlier that year to waive sanctions against a Russian company building Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office in September 2021, but that conversation didn’t go well, a new book reveals
Zelensky saw the decision as undermining Ukraine’s economic and security interests, fearing Russia would use the pipeline — which would carry Russian gas from the Arctic to Germany — as a geopolitical weapon.
The Biden administration argued that it was in the national interest of the US to waive the sanctions. The White House wanted to rebuild ties with Germany, which deteriorated under Biden’s predecessor in the Oval Office, Donald Trump.
Franklin Foer’s book will be published on September 5
The meeting was Biden’s second White House meeting with a European leader, intended to demonstrate the importance the government placed on Ukraine. At the time there were fears that Russia might invade its neighbour, but no formal attack had yet taken place.
However, five months after that first session between Biden and Zelensky, Russian President Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine.
Zelensky has struggled to get a White House meeting since being elected president of Ukraine in 2019.
But when he finally made it to the Oval Office, he had “persistent grudges” against Trump, Foer notes in his book, which he handed over.
Trump had pushed Zelensky to investigate Ukraine’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election and the business dealings of Biden and his son Hunter.
The then president had called the Ukrainian leader and said, “I would like you to do us a favor.” When a whistleblower leaked details of the call, it led to Trump’s first impeachment in the House of Representatives before the Senate acquitted the then-President.
Zelensky “subconsciously, at least … seemed to blame Biden for the humiliation he suffered, for the political awkwardness he endured,” writes Foer.
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2019
Biden and Zelensky would become close after Russia invaded – in February 2023, Biden visited Kiev to meet with the Ukrainian president
In comments to the media at the Oval Office meeting, Zelensky urged Biden to support Ukraine in joining NATO, to allow the US to play a role in reaching a settlement in Ukraine’s Donbas region, and to request U.S. assistance in the release of hundreds of individuals. captured in Donbas.
“I would like to discuss with President Biden here his view, his administration’s view of Ukraine’s chances of joining NATO and the timetable for this accession, if possible; and the role the United States can play in engaging in a peaceful settlement in the Donbas that we would like to achieve,” he said.
Biden simply replied, “Lots to talk about.”
He also said the United States is “firmly committed” to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and offered Kyiv $60 million in new security aid.
But Biden had entered the meeting expecting expressions of gratitude for the American support, Foer notes.
And in their private conversation, he told Zelensky that there was not enough support among NATO members for Ukraine to join.
At the time, it was thought that Russia was preparing for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, due to take place in February 2022.
Foer writes: ‘Zelenskiy’s frustration shut down his capacity for logic. After begging to join NATO, he began preaching that the organization is, in fact, a historical relic, with diminishing significance. He told Biden that France and Germany would leave NATO.
It was an absurd analysis – and a blatant contradiction. And it drove Biden away.”
But relations eventually improved and the United States became one of Ukraine’s biggest supporters during the Russian invasion.