Trump Still Hasn't Forgiven Zelenskyy for One Action: How a 2019 Phone Call Affected Relations with the US

What is the reason behind the U.S. president’s stance, which often works against American interests? Read more in this exclusive column for 24 Channel.

Unconditional Sympathy

Russia is helping Iran with intelligence and weapons. Putin's bot farms are flooding the American information space around the clock. U.S. citizens have been detained in Russia for years on trumped-up charges of espionage. For a long time, the Russians have been waging a hybrid war against key U.S. NATO allies through sabotage and cyberwarfare.

This is by no means a complete list of hostile actions that Russia is carrying out to the detriment of U.S. national interests. Americans are well aware of all this, since it is often through their intelligence agencies that we learn of new acts of sabotage carried out by the Russians. Undoubtedly, the U.S. president is informed of every such act during his daily morning briefings from the Director of National Intelligence.

And yet, despite everything, Donald Trump continues to stubbornly sympathize with Vladimir Putin, even dismissing accusations of aiding Iran – a particularly sensitive issue for the president on the eve of the congressional elections. Sometimes Trump briefly changes his mind, as he did during the NATO summit in Turkey last summer. But such thaws are very short-lived.

Where do Trump’s enduring warm feelings toward the Russian dictator come from? The answer lies in his first term as U.S. president.

Fellow Sufferers

After the 2016 presidential election, a full-blown media war erupted in the U.S. The Democratic Party and its allies viewed Trump’s victory as a catastrophe, and they threw their entire media machine into mitigating its consequences. A round-the-clock campaign to destroy the newly elected president unfolded in the press and on television, with Trump’s alleged collaboration with the Russians serving as the central theme of the smear campaign.

Even though Special Counsel Robert Mueller, appointed by the Democrats, found no evidence of direct collaboration between the president and Moscow, years of daily harassment in the media became a major source of irritation for Trump. At literally every press conference, he was asked questions about suspicions that he was a Kremlin agent, and each time he grew increasingly visibly angry at being forced to defend himself year after year.

This media environment contributed to Trump’s perception of Putin as his “brother in misfortune.” Imagine the situation: on one side, the American press, where dozens of commentators are saying around the clock that Trump has sold out to the Russians. On the other hand, the victims of this process – Trump and Putin. That’s right: in the eyes of the U.S. president, Putin had become just as much an “innocent victim” as he himself, since in the case of ties to Russia, their names were constantly mentioned together.

Moreover, Trump undoubtedly complained to Putin constantly during their phone calls about the behavior of his own media, and Putin, evidently, reassured poor Donald. And it doesn’t matter that this situation was entirely to Putin’s advantage, since it not only fueled conflict within American society but also created the illusion of Moscow’s omnipotence: as if to say, “We simply went ahead and changed the outcome of your election.”

We are by no means trying to justify Trump’s actions. The U.S. president, like the president of any other country, must not allow himself to be swayed by emotions when it comes to his country’s interests. However, this is precisely who Donald Trump is – in his dealings with foreign leaders, his own personal relationships with them have always taken precedence over U.S. interests. He constantly boasts about his friendly relations with Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un, even as these tyrants pursue openly anti-American policies.

At the same time, Trump is particularly harsh toward those he considers weak. Volodymyr Zelenskyy had the misfortune of finding himself on the wrong side of Trump’s sympathies back in 2019.

The (Not So) Perfect Phone Call

At a time when Trump had already formed his favorable attitude toward Putin, that very conversation with Zelenskyy took place – one that ultimately cost the U.S. president his first of two impeachments to date.

The Ukrainian president made the difficult but correct decision at the time not to investigate corruption cases involving the Biden family, specifically Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of directors of Burisma. One can only imagine what Ukraine’s relations with the U.S. administration under Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025 would have been like if, in 2019, Zelenskyy had done what Trump wanted him to do.

However, that decision came at the cost of deep animosity from the current occupant of the White House. In Donald Trump’s mind, it is Zelenskyy who gave the Democrats the opportunity seven years ago to initiate impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.

Trump still sincerely believes that his victory in the 2020 election was treacherously stolen from him – if not through outright ballot manipulation, then at the very least through the creation of unfavorable conditions that led to that defeat. Clearly, Trump sees Zelenskyy as playing a significant role in this, since the refusal to investigate the Bidens deprived him of one of his main trump cards in the election campaign – the opportunity to credibly accuse his opponent of high-level corruption.

On top of that, Trump surely remembers the words Zelenskyy used to congratulate Biden on his 2020 victory: “You know Ukraine better than the previous president.”

Personal Relationships Over National Interests

Trump’s behavior resembles that of a spoiled child, unworthy of the high office of the U.S. presidency. But our government needs to clearly understand the reasons behind what is happening now. Understanding the cause-and-effect relationships in this story is key to engaging with the White House over the next two years – and perhaps even longer, if the next president is someone ideologically aligned with the MAGA movement.

Anyone who communicates with Trump needs to remember: his approach to foreign policy is based almost exclusively on personal relationships, which very often do not align with U.S. interests. And if you’ve ever had the impression that Trump’s foreign policy is inconsistent – take a look at his personal relationships, and everything will fall into place.