US-Europe Rift Widens as Putin Welcomes Trump’s Shifting Ukraine Stance

Kenneth Roth, visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, responds to the shocking Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance, in which Vance and Trump publicly admonished Zelensky over the Russia-Ukraine war and accused him of not being grateful for the U.S.’s military support. “It’s embarrassing, frankly,” says Roth, “to see the two leading American officials behaving in such a juvenile fashion when these are life and death matters, not only for Ukrainian people, but also for Ukrainian democracy and European democracy.” Roth, whose new memoir Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments is now available, joins us for the hour to discuss human rights issues around the globe.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined here in New York by Kenneth Roth, visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, served for nearly 30 years as the executive director of Human Rights Watch. His new book is just out. It’s titled Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments. His recent piece for The Guardian headlined “Even Trump can be cajoled into doing the right thing — you just have to know which buttons to press.”

Ken Roth, welcome back to Democracy Now! Thanks so much for joining us. First, your response to this public clash?

KENNETH ROTH: Well, Amy, it’s great to be back.

I think it’s important to note that the segment you just showed was preceded by 40 minutes of normal, reasonable conversation. And as this, you know, weird press conference — because it was supposed to be, you know, a heads of state meeting, but it was all televised — as it was drawing to an end, that’s when JD Vance stepped in and tried to sabotage things.

And, you know, who knows what he was thinking? Partly, it was, you know, speaking to the media: “Remember me? I’m the guy who you ignore when you focus on Elon Musk.” You know, partly, it was his long-standing hostility to Ukraine’s democracy. You know, he favors Putin. He favors the neo-Nazi German AfD party. But when he started clashing with Zelensky, Zelensky said, “What do you mean, ‘just diplomacy’? What do you mean we don’t need security guarantees? We have this long history of Putin violating various ceasefire guarantees and basically using the pause to rearm and reinvade. And that’s what everybody fears now.” And Vance had no answer to that, so he got into attack dog mode: you know, “Why aren’t you more thankful?” And that, it’s embarrassing, frankly, as an American, to see the two leading American officials behaving in such a juvenile fashion, when these are life and death matters for not only Ukrainian people, but for Ukrainian democracy and potential European democracy. But this is how policy is being made.

And, you know, I think the real challenge now is: Can this be salvaged? What is on the table is not just a temporary ceasefire deal, but will the United States provide aerial backup for the European peacekeeping force that would be put on the ground to prevent Putin from reinvading down the road? It’s a very reasonable request. Trump has refused to agree to them. You know, he just — you know, it’s on the table repeatedly, and he doesn’t say yes. That’s what Zelensky was trying to secure, and that’s what Vance and then, ultimately, Trump sabotaged.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, of course, Trump also has long-term resentments of President Zelensky. That’s why he was bringing up Hunter Biden’s laptop, etc. —

KENNETH ROTH: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — involving his first impeachment.

KENNETH ROTH: No, precisely. I mean, he was impeached because of Trump’s utterly improper effort to persuade Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, when Trump was facing a potential challenge from Biden. So, this is how American foreign policy is being made? And, you know, understandably, the world is appalled.

And I think the real question is: How do we salvage the situation? And as I wrote in that Guardian piece that you just mentioned, I do think that there’s a way of salvaging disaster from all of this. And that is to really look at what Trump cares about, which is that — and he said this repeatedly during this press conference — you know, he is a master dealmaker. He spent his entire life making deals. And if we can show that a deal that is just a ceasefire without security guarantees will be a bad deal, it will just be a matter of time before Putin then tries to reinvade and take Kyiv, he has the — Trump has the potential of having a legacy as being the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century, you know, a man who appeased Putin and made a horrible deal. And I don’t think he wants to be remembered for that. So, I think that that’s our best route forward, is to stress that, you know, much as Trump dislikes Zelensky, much as Trump doesn’t want to get the U.S. military involved anyplace, this is a matter where the U.S. is being asked to take a pretty minimalist stance, and Trump’s refusal will utterly blow up this deal that he wants to make.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we’ll see what happens, because Zelensky went from not signing the deal, because Trump took it off the table, of rare earth minerals — and we’ll talk about that in a minute — to London, where an emergency meeting was called of European leaders. There’s even some discussion of possibly Macron, Starmer and Zelensky coming back to the White House at some point. I want to go to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking Sunday after the meeting with European leaders to discuss a peace proposal that would end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: We will go further to develop a coalition of the willing to defend a deal in Ukraine and to guarantee the peace. … The U.K. is prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air, together with others. Europe must do the heavy lifting, but to support peace in our continent and to succeed, this effort must have strong U.S. backing.

AMY GOODMAN: He’s standing at a podium that says “Securing Our Future.” He talks about a coalition of the willing, which ominously harkens back to the Iraq War, which you write about an Righting Wrongs, which was the U.S. forcing a number of countries to support its war on Iraq, interestingly.

KENNETH ROTH: Yeah. Well, look at, the coalition of the willing is all that they can do. If they do a European Union force, they’re subject to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s veto. So that’s just not an option, because Orbán is in there as a pawn for Putin.

But Starmer is absolutely right: Putting European peacekeepers on the ground won’t be enough, because Putin will attack them. And they feel that they need a U.S. backstop. Now, you know, Trump’s answer was, “Well, what do you mean? We’re going to have this mineral deal, and we’ll have American miners on the ground. What more do you need? That’s your security guarantee.” And this utterly ignores what Putin wants, because he could care less about more minerals or a little bit more territory. He wants to snuff out Ukraine’s democracy, because this represents a danger for Putin. You know, this is a major Slavic country right on the border of Russia, many Russian speakers. It represents the democracy that Russians don’t have, and that’s why he wants to get rid of it.

AMY GOODMAN: But it could be that this U.S. rare earth minerals deal is more of a threat to Putin than Zelensky, the U.S. really being interested there because of iPhones, because of Tesla cars, batteries, etc., that the U.S. controlling this part of Ukraine would be a real threat to Putin.

KENNETH ROTH: You know, I don’t think that’s what matters so much. In other words, Putin already is saying, “We’ll give you some of the rare earths from the occupied part of Ukraine, where Russia is in control.” You know, I mean, minerals can be sold by whoever owns them. What this fight is really about is: Does Ukraine maintain its democracy or not? And that’s what Putin wants to snuff out. And without these U.S.-backed European security guarantees, he’s going to succeed. And that’s why this fight in the White House was not just this juvenile food fight that Vance and Trump turned it into; this was really a life and death matter for Ukraine’s democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: The fact that we’ve never seen something like this in the White House, you had also so-called anchors and press people weighing in, like One American News, the partner of Congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene, asking Zelensky why he wasn’t wearing a suit. And he said, “This is wartime. I don’t do it at that time. But maybe” — he calls them “costumes,” Zelensky calls them — “I’ll be wearing a costume when the war ends that’s nicer than yours.” But, I mean, the low level of this discussion. And then, interestingly, Reuters and AP not being allowed in. AP, we know, because they refuse to say “Gulf of America,” they continue to refer to Gulf of Mexico. But TASS, somehow, inexplicably, getting in — that’s the Russian state news agency. And when the White House was told, they said, “We don’t know how he got into the inner sanctum” of a man whose attempted assassination twice, against Trump. “We’ll take him out.”

KENNETH ROTH: Yeah, I mean, obviously, nobody gets into the inner sanctums of the White House without being let in very deliberately. So, you know, this is just not credible, they don’t know how he got there. The fact that the One America guy is let in, and, you know, legitimate, serious journalists are not, just shows how Trump is not only surrounding himself by sycophants among his close advisers, but also wants only sycophantic journalists.

And, you know, for Zelensky to say, “Look at, I’m wearing kind of military-like garb because my country was invaded, and I’m at war, and as a matter of solidarity with the soldiers, I’m going to dress this way until the war is over with,” and to have a journalist who mocks him is just absurd. That shows, you know, just the triviality of the people surrounding Trump.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, do you think there’s a chance of peace soon?

KENNETH ROTH: I do think that everybody wants some kind of deal. I mean, at this point, you know, thousands upon thousands of soldiers are being killed for tiny little slivers of territory. You know, Putin treats Russian soldiers, as well as now North Koreans, as just cannon fodder, and it’s awful. And there’s no point in this continuing. It really does come down to: Is Putin going to just stop temporarily and then reinvade, or will security guarantees be put in place to prevent that? I think everybody but Trump wants that. And the question is: How do we persuade Trump to take that next step?

AMY GOODMAN: Kenneth Roth is visiting professor at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He has a new book out. It’s called Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments. When we come back, we talk about Gaza and more. Stay with us.