| In the early period of U.S. President Trump’s 2.0 term, on February 28, 2025, the United States and Ukraine held White House negotiations regarding the mineral agreement in eastern Ukraine. The terms of the agreement had already been negotiated in advance, and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was merely going to the White House to perform a signing ceremony. However, because someone in the U.S. White House negotiation delegation felt that the Ukrainian president’s attire was not formal enough, this minor issue triggered disagreements between the two sides, and as a result the agreement was shelved.
At the time, some people, standing from the American position, accused Ukraine of being like a beggar who had taken advantage of the United States for many years without cost, yet when the United States asked for a small favor, Ukraine wanted to make demands. Kaiyuan Net published an article post about this White House negotiation, which can be seen at https://endccp.ueuo.com/poster?q=PNI20250302083743 《A Method to Avoid the Collapse of the U.S.-Ukraine Mineral Agreement White House Negotiations》. The post analyzed Ukraine’s role, value, and capabilities, as well as methods to avoid the collapse of the talks. After this post was forwarded online, it is possible that it reached the sight and hearing of the U.S. White House president. Because U.S. intelligence teams extensively collect information from networks around the world, and in subsequent U.S.-Ukraine negotiations, the U.S. White House changed its negotiation approach: it no longer sent a group of negotiation representatives as a delegation, but instead had Trump and Zelenskyy talk alone. This is consistent with the principle of the method to avoid collapse of talks described in that post. For example, on April 26, Zelenskyy held a 15-minute meeting with Trump at the Vatican. In the photos taken and released by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on April 26, 2025, it is shown that on site Trump and Zelenskyy each sat on a chair in an open area, conducting a one-on-one face-to-face talk. And in the reported photos of the meeting between U.S. President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office of the White House on August 18, 2025, it is also shown that Trump and Zelenskyy sat close to each other side by side on their respective sofas for the talk, with no group of assistants behind Trump participating in the meeting. This indicates that the post from Kaiyuan Net regarding views on the U.S.-Ukraine negotiations may have been collected by U.S. intelligence agencies and adopted by Trump. Therefore, Trump better understood the characteristics of Eastern people and adopted a more suitable meeting approach, thereby achieving good meeting results. |