Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s fiery Oval Office exchange with President Trump may have been influenced by the “gift” he chose to give the command-in-chief during the highly televised meeting.
Zelensky brought the championship belt of Oleksandr Usyk, the current world heavyweight boxing champion, during his February White House visit and planned to hand it over to Trump as a show of goodwill, he told Time Magazine on Monday in his first major interview since the Oval Office clash.
The belt was next to him on a table when the sit down between the two world leaders and Vice President JD Vance began.
However, Zelensky took a different approach at the last minute and didn’t grab the belt.
He instead reached for a folder containing graphic images of Ukrainian prisoners of war after Russia released them to show Trump.
“That’s tough stuff,” Trump told him as he looked over the images — some of which showed signs that the soldiers had been tortured.
Those pictures were what turned their sit-down sour, unnamed US officials told Time Magazine. They suggested that Trump felt Zelensky was trying to blame him for the injured soldiers in front of the cameras.
Zelensky said that wasn’t his intention but does not regret showing Trump the images because he wanted to appeal to him on a human level.
“He has family, loved ones, children. He has to feel the things that every person feels,” Zelensky said.
“What I wanted to show were my values. But then, well, the conversation went in another direction.”
After showing him the pictures, the meeting sparked into a tense, heated argument between the US leaders and the Ukrainian president — during which Trump told him he was “gambling with World War III.”
The conversation soured further when Vance said it was “disrespectful” for him to “come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.”
After the tense meeting ended, Zelensky hustled out of the West Wing and into a waiting car two hours and 20 minutes after he arrived.
Zelesky said he had left the championship belt on the table in the Oval Office, but it’s a mystery even to him if Trump ever received the gift.
“Maybe it’s still sitting there,” Zelensky said.
A White House staffer grabbed the belt after the meeting and brought it to Trump’s private dining room, where the president keeps other gifts presented by world leaders, according to Time Magazine.
Zelensky did not comment much on the meeting and is ready to leave the heated exchange in the past.
“Let’s leave that to history,” he said.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff claimed earlier this month that Zelensky “sent a letter” to Trump following the meeting and “apologized.”
Trump publicly revealed that he received a letter from Zelensky during his annual presidential address to Congress but did not mention receiving an apology.
Despite his tense meeting with Trump last month, Zelensky said his American counterpart remains Ukraine’s most potent weapon against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He believes Trump and his administration are looking for a big win on the world stage by ending the war.
“If he wants to, Trump can squeeze concessions from the Russians, because he seems to be the only one that Putin fears,” he said.
Zelensky came to that conclusion after witnessing how “the Russians got really scared” when Trump’s administration threatened to sanction the Kremlin over its continued bombing of Ukrainian cities during the recent peace talks.
After repeated meetings with Trump’s team, Zelensky said it was clear the administration wanted to score diplomatic victories in the war.
“They have their own ambitions,” he said of Trump’s team. “They see their role in history.”
