Inside the week that upended U.S.-Ukraine relations

Tensions between the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government had been escalating behind the scenes for the past week.

Tensions between the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government had been escalating behind the scenes for the past week before they fully erupted into public view Wednesday.

Privately, Ukrainian officials were alarmed after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was told his meetings with top Trump administration officials could be canceled if he didn’t swiftly agree to certain demands. They worried about mixed messages, in public and private, from senior Trump advisers about whether the possibility of Ukraine’s joining NATO would be on the table in negotiations with Russia to end the war. And they were concerned when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told them in a closed-door meeting that the United States may withdraw a significant number of its troops from Europe.

From President Donald Trump’s perspective, Zelenskyy was showing resistance to what Trump views as reasonable asks of a country the United States has set up to receive more than $75 billion in military aid. He found Zelenskyy in no rush to make some compromises that U.S. and European officials have long conceded in private would be required in a peace deal. And he grew incensed over Ukraine’s public complaints about being excluded from talks between the United States and Russia about ending the war after Zelenskyy met several times with some of Trump’s top advisers.

“There is frustration,” a White House official said, accusing Zelenskyy and some other European leaders of trying to “denigrate” Trump’s peace efforts.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. and European officials and other people with knowledge of private meetings and discussions between and within the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal conversations.