United States President Donald Trump and his Ukraine counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy cancelled a mineral rights and security agreement at the White House on Friday after a news conference degenerated into a rare spectacle of raised voices and name-calling.
The deal would have been a showpiece for Trump’s transactional presidency and another sign of the resource nationalism that’s swept the globe in recent years as countries transition away from fossil fuels. The scrubbed signing comes as overt U.S. support for Nato declines and Trump pushes for a stronger European role in its own defence.
The mood soured quickly in the Oval Office when Trump pushed for the mineral deal and Zelenskyy sought a security backstop. Then, Vice-President J.D. Vance raised his voice and told the Ukrainian leader he should “be thankful” for U.S. efforts, while Trump said Zelenskyy “was gambling with World War Three.”
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