Less than a week after rallying to show support for their fellow Ukrainians on the three-year anniversary of the war with Russia, Anna Tselukhina and her organization are preparing to come together again.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) will host what it is calling an emergency rally Sunday afternoon in downtown Calgary in response to the Friday meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
During the testy and heated exchange in front of cameras in the Oval Office, Trump told Zelenskyy to make a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine or “we’re out.”
Trump and Vance also accused Zelenskyy of “gambling with World War III” and told him he must be more grateful for U.S. assistance in the fight against Russia’s three-year siege.
“This is our way to raise up our voice and say that Ukraine is not just a flag, not just those rare metals somewhere underground, but Ukraine are people who know, who understand, who feel, who want their home to be free and independent,” Tselukhina said.
She says Ukrainians who fled to Canada because of the war are disappointed with how the meeting went down.
The UCC called Trump and Vance’s behaviour “disgraceful” and a “shameful attack.”
Zelenskyy, who was in Washington to finalize an economic agreement granting the U.S. ownership of some rare earth minerals in Ukraine, left the White House without signing a deal.
Despite Friday’s explosive exchange, the connection between Kyiv and Washington is strained but not severed, according to Hanna Shelest, security studies program director for Ukrainian Prism Foreign Policy Council and editor-in-chief at Ukraine Analytica.
“My professional intuition is saying that it was done intentionally,” Shelest said, referring to Trump and Vance on Friday.
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“So now it is possible to say that President Trump is that hero who would like a peace, and Ukrainians has the president who would like war and Ukrainians are guilty by themselves.”
For McGill University political science associate professor Maria Popova, Friday’s exchange signalled the goals of the Trump administration.
“To get Zelensky to sign a sort of blank cheque type of deal. They want to break him and to make him really submit to whatever they decide will be the deal for peace,” she said.
“We’re going to continue, in fact, for a while, to see this kind of back and forth and this attempt by the Trump administration to strong-arm Ukraine into agreeing to something.”
Despite not signing a rare earths deal with the U.S., Shelest says Zelenskyy was open about the fact that he is ready for the future with the U.S.
Trump’s apparent walk-back of his comments calling Zelenskyy a dictator is also an indication the president is willing to change his mind, according to Shelest.
However, the question now is whether the U.S. will keep supporting Ukraine or if the burden will fall to Europe.
“Unfortunately, without the U.S., it would be extremely difficult. None of the European countries will be able to supplement this,” Shelest said.
However, experts warn about the consequences should the U.S. withhold the Patriot missile system.
“One of the initial ways in which we’re going to see this will be more civilian casualties as Russia bombs Ukrainian cities and Ukrainian cities lack the missiles to intercept and defend their civilians.”
Answers could come early next week when allies meet in London.
Ahead of the summit with other European leaders, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer embraced Zelenskyy on Saturday and told him he had the nation’s unwavering support.
British media reported that King Charles has extended an invitation to Zelenskyy for the Ukrainian leader to come to Sandringham on Sunday. The King has previously thrown his support behind Ukraine.
The leaders of Canada, the European Union and several EU members also expressed solidarity with Ukraine, which Zelenskyy shared and thanked for their support on his X (formally Twitter) account.
Foreign Minister Melanie Joly reaffirmed Canada’s commitment to Ukraine and support for reaching a deal with the U.S., but did not directly condemn what happened in the meeting. She did, however, say Russia was “noting the interaction that happened today.”
“We know that President Putin has no red lines,” she told reporters in Vancouver. “Our goal is to make sure that we can continue to support Ukrainians and that we can keep very strong G7 unit amidst all this unpredictability and even chaos.”
On the front lines, Shelest says both Russia and Ukraine “are currently trying to get as favourable positions as possible before the diplomatic negotiations.”
She says effort must be put into understanding the potential hidden reasons for Friday’s exchange.
“Because if that is done to satisfy Russians, that would be much more difficult in this case. [It] means that Americans just made their choice to ally with [an] enemy instead [of] to ally with friends.”
In Calgary, Tselukhina is holding out hope for her country and the family and friends she left behind.
“This is like an exam for the whole world. Will we keep democracy as a high value or will we give up with it?” she said. “I think, I hope that we can pass this exam.”
— with files from Sean Boynton and Drew Stremick
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