Audio Excerpt - James David Vance:

“Mr. President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.”

RUBY:

So I think we should start with the meeting in the Oval Office between Zelensky, Trump and Vance. As you were watching it, I mean, tell me what you were seeing.

DAVID:

I think there's a couple different thoughts that jumped in my head. One was the lack of respect for a foreign leader coming to the Oval Office, especially one that has sacrificed so much to save his country from an invasion.

RUBY:

David Szakonyi is a political scientist and his specialty is money in politics.

So while much of the world was stunned by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky at their meeting in the Oval Office, David kind of saw it coming.

DAVID:

The writing's been on the wall for weeks now. It may well be that the Trump administration decided they weren't going to back Ukraine immediately upon taking office, or even months ago. And this meeting was just kind of like the cherry on the cake to set that process further in motion. But it's a public declaration that relations between the U.S. and Ukraine are the worst they've been in years.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Don't tell us what we're going to feel. We are trying to solve a problem, don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.”

Audio Excerpt - Volodymyr Zelensky:

“I'm not telling you.”

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Because you're in no position to dictate that. Remember that.”

Audio Excerpt - Volodymyr Zelensky:

“I am not dictating that.”

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“You're in no position to dictate what we're going to feel. We're going to feel very good, we're going to feel very good and very strong.”

Audio Excerpt - Volodymyr Zelensky:

"You will feel influence."

RUBY:

Before the meeting went off the rails, before Zelensky was asked to leave, the leaders has been negotiating a deal that would give the U.S. access to a significant share of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.

But Russia’s also been working on their own set of deals with Trump. And what they’re angling for could be catastrophic for Ukraine.

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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Today, associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, David Szakonyi, on the new Russia-U.S. relationship, and Trump's ‘corporate democracy’?

It’s Tuesday, March 4.

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RUBY:

David, the original purpose of this catastrophic meeting, at the Oval Office was to sign a deal where the US would get access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals. That did not happen. And now there is a big question mark over what support the U.S. will supply to Ukraine at all, going forward. So what does that mean for Ukraine?

DAVID:

A really difficult time going forward.

Ukraine has depended on U.S. military and financial assistance since February 2022, and there's not a ready substitute for everything that we've provided; so, billions of dollars to fund its government, key technical assistance to repair and rebuild parts of its economy and infrastructure that Russia keeps destroying.

And also the intelligence support that the U.S. appears to have been supplying and to a very large extent since February 2022, helping identify Russian targets to the best of our knowledge and passing on critical knowledge about how the battlefield is unfolding that Ukraine's been able to deploy on the ground. We don't know how much of that is in jeopardy, but conceivably after Friday's meeting, the U.S. could cut off every single type of assistance across all these different dimensions going forward.

If I was Ukraine, I would be worried and concerned about how it can continue to push back against the Russian military machine with basically half of the support, or even less than it, that it enjoyed in the last three years.

RUBY:

Well, let's talk a little more about alternate backers then. Zelensky went straight to the UK to meet the Prime Minister there, Keir Starmer, after the meeting in the Oval Office. And this meeting, it went very differently, didn't it? So can you tell me a bit about what came out of it and what you think the state of that alliance is at the moment?

DAVID:

I think there's been more or less a united European front since Friday's meeting, initially on social media and now in person, signalling to Ukraine that Europe fundamentally disagrees with the Trump administration and is going to try to do everything in its power to back Ukraine with what it needs rather than telling Ukraine what it should do.

Audio Excerpt - Keir Starmer:

“Our starting point must be to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position now so that they can negotiate from a position of strength. And we are doubling down in our support. Yesterday evening, the UK signed a £2.2 billion loan to provide more military aid to Ukraine, backed not by the British taxpayer, but by the profits from frozen Russian assets.”

DAVID:

Now, Europe doesn't have the scale of military production to make up for the U.S. abandoning Ukraine and Europe has its own economic difficulties and there's a lot of debate over whether it can afford to invest so much of its limited resources or borrow more than it already has in order to both equip itself in the event that NATO ceases to be this backstop for Europe and supply Ukraine with what the United States have been providing and potentially even more if it wants to change the course of the conflict.

RUBY:

And Trump has been complaining for some time that he doesn't want the U.S. to foot the bill for Ukraine's security. So in staging this disastrous meeting with Ukraine and then having Europe signal that it might come to the rescue, did Trump ultimately get what he wanted here?

DAVID:

I think Trump wants America to lead the world in some respect, even if he doesn't want us to pay for it anymore. And the idea of all the European leaders coming together to fund their own version of foreign policy, the potentially challenge of the United States, may weaken Trump's ability to project power that he's promised to U.S. voters.

So... I wouldn't say he's sitting extremely pretty right now. After Friday, there's been, I think, a lot more criticism in the media than I expected, even from some conservative sources, about how he and Vance handled the meeting. Putin is extremely unpopular in the United States. And Zelensky has over a majority of support, according to the best survey opinion polls that we have in this country. So he's tacked out a hard line decision that is in conflict with what most of the American public wants. So I think it's too soon to tell.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break - what Russia is promising Trump.

DANIEL:

Hi, Daniel James here. 7am tells stories that need to be told. Our journalism is founded on trust and independence. And now, we're increasing our coverage. Every Saturday until the election, we’ll bring you an extra episode, to break down the biggest political moments of the week. If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support. Thanks for listening and supporting our work.

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RUBY:

David, there was a meeting between Russian and U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia just over a week ago. Tell me about that meeting, and how it compares to what we saw at the Oval Office?

DAVID:

This was a pretty hastily conveyed meeting by the Saudis to bring together a handful of high ranking officials on the Russian and the U.S. side to start a conversation about what a normalisation of relations between U.S. and Russia would look like, trying to put U.S. Russia relations on a new footing, and both sides told each other what they wanted to hear and therefore it seemed like there was optimism coming out of the meeting that they'd be able to hash something out even though there's so much to be done and so many different issues that are unresolved.

RUBY:

Right. Can you tell me about the key officials who were at those talks?

DAVID:

So on the Russian side, they have a long-time foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who's been at this for decades now and extremely experienced, alongside a former ambassador to the United States, Yury Shikhov, who's getting on this year, but has a lot of experience dealing with the Americans. But I think the surprise to everybody was Kirill Dmitriev, who's considerably younger than the other two from the Russian delegation. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School, he worked at Goldman Sachs. He's a dealmaker, he's a business person, and he can speak the language, both corporate and just linguistically, just English. And he's been in these situations before. I think they're putting a lot of faith that he's gonna be able to work some magic with Trump and his emissaries.

RUBY:

And when you say the corporate or the business perspective, what is that perspective on these talks?

DAVID:

It's something that I think a lot of countries have internalised, you know, since the election in November. It's like, what do we do with Trump 2.0? How do we find a common language with Trump? And many countries, including Russia, have centred on this. Well, flattery of course works. But so does speaking the language of business. So does offering Trump some type of business deal where America purportedly benefits financially, right? Trump seems to want to demonstrate to American voters that he's making America wealthier, more prosperous.

So Russia had trotted out several proposals that really pull on this string with Trump, right? These are areas of joint Russian and American investment in rare earth minerals, right? The Ukrainians offered something months ago, the backbone of this deal of last week, and the Russians offered a counter proposal saying, ‘we have rare earth minerals, too, you should come and help develop them and we'll cut you another deal’.

And something a little bit more nebulous and vague, but potentially just as large as the other, too, is the development of the Arctic. And we all heard Trump desiring to annex Greenland. The Arctic is massive. It supposedly has vast stores of rare earth minerals and even fossil fuels and a lot of other implications for economic development and Russia has been. competing ferociously for access to the Arctic over the last couple decades with the United States. They saw an opportunity to maybe make nice by having some talks about how to split the Arctic and make it so that Trump could come home with some win, some victory. But it just goes against decades of diplomatic strategy.

RUBY:

So you can't necessarily see what the long term goal of the Trump administration is when it comes to this conflict.

DAVID:

I think our best guess is that he's okay with a multipolar world where Russia has taken seriously treated equitably in a way that it's wanted to for decades and the U.S. is fine with that. And Russia is seen as a partner rather than an adversary and Trump can go back and say that he brought peace to different parts of the world through negotiation, even if there were significant concessions made.

But, I think any business with Russia right now just does not have any sort of guarantee, especially what we've seen the last three years in terms of nationalisation and property rights violations and just a very aggressive Putin government towards businesses of all types.

RUBY:

And you talked about the way that Russia has reopened business negotiations with the U.S. on these different fronts, but can you just tell me what was said about what Russia wants when it comes to Ukraine, what terms they would like to see?

DAVID:

Well, they very clearly don't want Ukraine to be ever invited into NATO. And any type of agreement that spells that out in writing, whether it's 20 years or 50 years, is gonna be extremely welcome in Moscow. They also want recognition for the territories that they annexed in 2014, that is Crimea, as well as those that they've claimed since 2022, the four regions that they illegitimately annexed in September of 2022. So those, I think, are its main goals. But Putin doesn't necessarily want peace, right? He doesn't want the fighting to stop because I think he feels he has the upper hand that Russia can withstand another year or more of this conflict, can mobilise more troops if it needs to. And I expect their wish list to expand if their campaign picks up any speed.

RUBY:

And it does sound like, from what you're saying, that Russia, in approaching negotiations in the way that it has, they understand that for Trump, any peace deal is a business deal as well, that this is a transaction. Does it seem to you that that approach is working?

DAVID:

I think so. We need to think of the Trump approach as kind of like corporate diplomacy, right? This is a bunch of business people that are trotting around the world asking what can you do for us and what can we give you in return? And let's put some numbers to those conversations rather than thinking about what does a new security architecture look like or what do troop deployments, how should they be organised or nuclear weapons? I think all of those are gonna take second priority to money. The Russians understand this and that's why they floated these various investment proposals because they think, and I think they're probably correct, that Trump cares more about the finances than he does about other ideological goals at this stage.

RUBY:

David, thank you so much for your time.

DAVID:

You're very welcome.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Lawyers for former Military Lawyer David McBride, have argued their client’s prison sentence failed to take into account he was acting quote “bravely and selflessly”, in an attempt to right what he thought was a “serious wrong”.

McBride is appealing against both his conviction and the severity of his sentence in the ACT court of appeal after he was sentenced to five years and eight months for releasing documents to the ABC which detailed war crimes in Afghanistan.

And,

Mikey Madison has won best actress at the 97th Academy Awards, for her role as a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch in the film Anora. Meanwhile, Adrian Brody won Best Actor for his role in The Brutalist. And Sean Baker in Anora took home both Best Picture and Best Director.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is *7am. Thanks for listening.

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