Ambassador Vesko Garcević comments on Zelenskyy’s Oval Office Visit
Ambassador Vesko Garcević, Professor at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, was invited by TRT World News to comment on the recent meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His take on the meeting was broadcast on February 28th here.
In the commentary, he described the meeting as an unprecedented display of hubris and open confrontation.
“President Zelensky and President Trump approached the meeting from two fundamentally different perspectives. For Zelensky, the war in Ukraine is an existential war for his country. Therefore, he wanted the US to weigh in and provide security guarantees to safeguard Ukraine from a potential Russian aggression in the future. In addition, for Ukraine and President Zelenskyy, it was of key importance not to be put on equal footing with Russia. He wanted it to be acknowledged who was the aggressor and who was the victim in the ongoing war in his country. Conversely, for President Trump, the deal was, first of all, about Ukraine’s rare earth minerals and peace was only a tool to achieve that goal.”
Ambassador Vesko Garčević dealt with issues pertinent to European security and NATO for almost 14 years during his diplomatic career. In 2004, he was posted in Vienna to serve as Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He was Montenegro’s Ambassador to NATO from 2010 until 2014 and served as Montenegro’s National Coordinator for NATO from 2015 until he joined the faculty at the Pardee School. Learn more about Ambassador Garčević on his faculty profile.