Trump was ‘irritated’ that just two days after a public conflict with Zelensky at the White House, European leaders were embracing the Ukrainian president in London, – Politico

U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly irritated by European leaders’ public support for Zelensky shortly after Oval Office meeting.

This was reported by Politico, citing sources familiar with the situation.

According to the report, Trump was particularly angered by footage from London showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky being warmly embraced by leaders of the United Kingdom and other European countries. That same day, Zelensky also met with the British monarch — a move which, according to a senior British official, further fueled the negative reaction from the American side.

“Trump’s team didn’t like the optics — it looked as if Europe was demonstratively embracing someone with whom the U.S. had just had a tense exchange. This caused irritation and may have been the trigger for Washington to start pressuring London to push Kyiv toward peace negotiations,” Politico quotes a source as saying.

The situation escalated later that same Sunday evening, when Zelensky stated in an interview that a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia was still “very, very far away.” According to some sources, this remark was seen as “the final straw” and directly led to Trump’s decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine the very next day.

In the following weeks, London and Paris attempted to ease tensions between Washington and Kyiv, but as Politico notes, “the relationship between Trump and Zelensky remains cool and far from the level of trust seen previously.”