Washington: A week ago Donald Trump branded Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator. On Friday he will host the Ukrainian president at the White House and sign a deal granting Washington access to Ukraine\u2019s rare minerals.
\nThe extraordinary turnaround caps a week of frantic international diplomacy centered on Washington, as Kyiv seeks to shore up support despite Trump\u2019s recent pivot toward Russia.
\nTrump upended years of US policy on Ukraine two weeks ago when he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and started talks on ending the three-year-old war \u2014 without Kyiv.
\nHe also alarmed allies as he appeared to turn on Zelensky, berating him as a \u201cdictator without elections\u201d and blaming Ukraine for Russia\u2019s February 2022 invasion.
\nBut Trump\u2019s tone has softened in recent days after visits by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
\n\u201cI have a lot of respect for him,\u201d Trump said of Zelensky on Thursday. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get along really well.\u201d
\nTrump also backtracked on the \u201cdictator\u201d broadside he launched on social media at Zelensky last week \u2014 a jibe he had previously refused to retract even as he declined to call Putin a dictator too.
\n\u201cDid I say that? I can\u2019t believe I said that,\u201d Trump responded when asked about the Zelensky comment by journalists during a meeting with Starmer.
\nThe dictator outburst was sparked in particular by Zelensky\u2019s initial rejection of the deal to give Washington preferential access to Ukrainian natural resources, including oil, gas and rare earth metals.
\nZelensky demanded US security guarantees as part of any deal but Trump has refused to give any commitments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington: A week ago Donald Trump branded Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator. On Friday he will host the Ukrainian president at the White House and sign a deal granting Washington access to Ukraine\u2019s rare minerals. The extraordinary turnaround caps a week of frantic international diplomacy centered on Washington, as Kyiv seeks to shore up support despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-464298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n