Presidents Trump and Zeleneskyy meet this week. What’s their relationship like?

**Debbie Elliott** (0:00)
It's Consider This, where every day, we go deep on one big news story. Today, setting the stage for a key White House meeting. It's been a busy couple of weeks in Ukraine. First, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired his popular defense minister. That decision led to mass protests across the country.
In response, Zelenskyy fired the increasingly unpopular commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, a decision that was welcomed by the protesters. And all of this comes just as the Ukrainian president prepares to visit the White House to discuss the state of the war. Consider this, amid a busy few weeks in Ukraine, presidents Trump and Zelenskyy are set to meet at the White House. What's the status of their relationship? And how could it shape the war in Ukraine?
From NPR, I'm Debbie Elliott.

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**Debbie Elliott** (2:19)
It's Consider This from NPR. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet with President Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
Last year, when the two met there, things got tense.

**Donald Trump** (2:33)
You've allowed yourself to be in a very bad position and he happens to be right about it.

**Oleksandr Kriyev** (2:37)
From the very beginning of the war, Mr. Brown, I was...

**Donald Trump** (2:38)
You're not in a good position. You don't have the cards right now.

**Debbie Elliott** (2:42)
That was at the White House in February of last year, but a lot has happened since. Trump and Zelenskyy appear to have mended their relationship, despite the fact that support for Ukraine remains divisive among Republicans. Meanwhile, just last week, Ukraine's military leadership went through one of its biggest shakeups since the start of the full-scale invasion.
Aleksandr Kryaev has been following these developments closely from Kyiv. He's the North America Director of the Ukrainian Prism Foreign Policy Council, a Kyiv-based think tank. Welcome to the program.

**Oleksandr Kriyev** (3:19)
Yes, hello. Nice to connect to you.

**Debbie Elliott** (3:21)
So in just the last two weeks, Zelenskyy has fired both his Defense Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces. Can you tell us about the significance of those moves and what prompted them?

**Oleksandr Kriyev** (3:35)
Well, first of all, the main problem here is basic governmental mismanagement, because the President has no authority without the legal support from the Verkhovna Rada, Ukrainian Parliament, and without the good arguments on why he is going to fire these people. He has no authority to do so. So basically, the main outrage was not only because it was Fedorov or it was somebody else, but because Zelenskyy distinctively overstepped his own authority, and he definitely violated several positions from Ukrainian Constitution. So that was the first, this year, I mean, that was the first major crisis of Ukrainian democracy, which hopefully was prevented by the activity of Ukrainian civil society and the activity of Ukrainians on the street.

**Debbie Elliott** (4:25)
What was the scene on the street like and what were people saying?

**Oleksandr Kriyev** (4:29)
Well, as also being a senior lecturer at Kyiv University, Kyiv Mohail Academy, I can only say that most of our students were there at the streets protesting these managerial decisions of Zelenskyy. We see a lot of young people, we saw a lot of families with children being there. They are well organized, they are well managed through the social media. They involve a lot of people from different backgrounds, as I say, a lot of military guys who were also there.
There is a very distinguishably diverse crowd on the streets of Kiev, Lviv, Zhitomir and basically all the major cities in Ukraine.
To many of my compatriots, that was a sign that Ukrainian democracy is still very vibrant. Although we didn't have elections since 2019, we still see that Ukrainians are not ready to give up on the democracy. Even in wartime, Ukrainians are not ready to give up on their right to protest if the government is ready to do some shady stuff.