Zelensky told to leave White House after clash with Trump and Vance
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Donald Trump at the White House today for the first time since US-Russia negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine began. During the meeting, he clashed with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who told him he was being “disrespectful”. We hear reaction from Washington DC, Kyiv, and elsewhere in Europe.
Also on the programme: Protests erupt across Greece on the second anniversary of a train crash that killed 57 people; and the Japanese documentary about sexual assault that could win an Oscar this weekend.
(Photo: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky departs the White House in Washington DC, USA, 28th February 2025. Credit: Shawn Thew/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Newsar from the BBC World Service coming to you live from our studios in central London. |
| 0:10.3 | I'm Julian Marshall. |
| 0:12.5 | President Zelensky met Donald Trump today for the first time since the US president began unilateral negotiations with Russia earlier this month. |
| 0:20.5 | And it didn't go well. |
| 0:22.9 | Ukraine and Europe have so far been excluded from these negotiations, but Mr. Zelensky and |
| 0:29.2 | Mr. Trump had been expected to sign an agreement giving the United States access to Ukraine's |
| 0:35.4 | mineral and energy resources. Instead, the encounter descended into |
| 0:41.1 | a bad-tempered shouting match between the two men in front of the world's media, with the |
| 0:47.2 | Vice President J.D. Vance noisily chipping in. We're playing an extended extract of this |
| 0:53.8 | unprecedented public exchange, which marks a new low in the already strained relations between Washington and Kiev. |
| 1:01.5 | It began with a question from Mr. Vance to President Zelenskyy. |
| 1:06.0 | For four years in the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked |
| 1:11.1 | tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the |
| 1:16.8 | country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy. We tried the |
| 1:24.9 | pathway of Joe Biden of thumping our chest and pretending that the President of the United States's words mattered more than the President of the United States's actions. |
| 1:34.7 | What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. |
| 1:38.7 | That's what President Trump is doing. |
| 1:40.3 | Can I ask you? |
| 1:41.8 | Sure. |
| 1:42.7 | Yeah? |
| 1:43.2 | Yeah. |
| 1:43.8 | Okay. |
... |
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