EXCLUSIVE — Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was at the White House Wednesday ahead of the imminent signing of a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal and just an hour after President Donald Trump’s latest social media attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A government motorcade flying Ukrainian flags pulled up to Pennsylvania Avenue, which services both the White House and Treasury Department, on Wednesday afternoon shortly after 1:15 p.m.
The motorcade departed the government complex roughly one hour later. Ukrainian government officials confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Shmyhal was traveling in the motorcade but declined to provide a reason for his visit.
White House and Treasury Department officials also declined to comment.
Trump told reporters last week that he expected to sign the deal, which had been delayed following his disastrous Oval Office meeting with Zelensky at the end of February. Since then, talks between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia toward brokering a ceasefire have advanced at a glacial pace, and Trump has repeatedly lambasted Zelensky for allegedly slow-walking the process.
Earlier Wednesday afternoon, just an hour before Shmyhal’s arrival at the White House, the president said in a statement that Zelensky’s recent declaration that Ukraine would not recognize Russian control of Crimea is “very harmful to the Peace Negotiations.”
“It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The statement made by Zelenskyy today will do nothing but prolong the ‘killing field,’ and nobody wants that! We are very close to a Deal, but the man with ‘no cards to play’ should now, finally, GET IT DONE.”
On Wednesday morning, Trump held a brief question-and-answer session with reporters but declined to comment on the ceasefire talks.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did address Trump’s most recent attack on Zelensky during her own gaggle with reporters on the White House driveway.
TRUMP HAS ‘NO INTENTION’ OF FIRING FED CHAIRMAN JEROME POWELL
“The president is not asking Ukraine to recognize Crimea. Nobody has asked them to do that. What he is asking is for people to come to the negotiating table, recognizing that this has been a brutal war for far too long, and in order to make a good deal, both sides have to walk away a little bit unhappy,” she said. “And unfortunately, President Zelensky has been trying to litigate this peace negotiation in the press, and that’s unacceptable to the president. These should be closed-door negotiations.”
