Zelenskyy touted the U.S.–Ukraine minerals deal as a key outcome of the meeting, urging Ukrainian lawmakers to ratify it quickly.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that his meeting with President Donald Trump at the Vatican a week ago was the “most substantive” the two have ever held.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv on May 2, Zelenskyy said the encounter with Trump, which took place on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral on April 26, marked a shift in tone and substance between the two leaders.
“I believe our conversation with President Trump was the best we’ve had so far. It may have been the shortest, but it was the most substantive. With all due respect to our teams, I think the one-on-one format worked best,” Zelenskyy said, Ukrainian news agency Interfax-Ukraine reports.
Zelenskyy added that the meeting, held in a private one-on-one format inside St. Peter’s Basilica, cut through diplomatic formalities by creating the “right atmosphere for a real dialogue.”
In a video address to the nation on May 1, a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko signed the much-anticipated U.S.–Ukraine minerals deal, Zelenskyy also had words of praise for the meeting with Trump, describing it as “meaningful.”
“We look forward to other outcomes from that conversation–it was a meaningful meeting, and President Trump and I used every minute to the fullest,” he said. “I thank him for that. And once again, I thank both our teams–the Ukrainian and the American. The work on the agreement was truly professional, and although the negotiations were at times challenging, the result is a strong one.”
U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators had continued to revisit the terms of the proposed minerals deal in the weeks following Zelenskyy’s White House visit on Feb. 28, with signs of tension emerging in the final stretch.
Zelenskyy said the newly signed minerals deal, which grants U.S. firms preferential access to Ukraine’s rare earth and strategic mineral deposits, was the first concrete outcome of the Vatican meeting—and a sign of what could follow.
“In fact, this is the first tangible outcome of that Vatican meeting, making it truly historic,” he said.
By Tom Ozimek
