History Repeating: Kosovo, Ukraine and the Diplomacy That Never Was

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Diplomacy is best performed behind closed doors, away from journalists, microphones, and the “optics.” Especially during peace talks in which a cease-fire has not even been established. When it isn’t—when it spills into the open like a broken sewer line, when it crumbles like the House of Cards—we get what happened in the Oval Office: a shouting match and the disintegration of what we are still expected to call diplomacy.

J.D. Vance, never one to resist a chance to start a diplomatic fight, launched the first grenade. Zelenskyy caught it and, instead of tossing it away—like Keir Starmer did the day before with diplomatic ease and calculated restraint—held onto it. Then Trump, drawn by the irresistible instinct for combat, waded in. The press looked on, stunned, as the war of words spiraled. It was politics at its rawest—unfiltered, unscripted, and utterly unhinged.

It was less diplomacy than a dysfunctional family Christmas, with estranged cousins screaming at each other across the table while the guests—here, the assembled members of the press—took notes.

Vance confronted Zelenskyy, accusing him of campaigning for Kamala Harris on his Pennsylvania trip in 2024. Trump, sensing blood in the water, let it escalate. As the exchange between Zelenskyy and Vance kept spiraling out, he had no choice but to step in. “Let me tell you, you don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards—but without us, you don’t have any cards,” Trump told him.

And things might have calmed down quickly—if only Zelenskyy had better read the room. But jet-lagged, raw, and carrying the weight of three years on the battlefield, he wasn’t there to retreat. Translating in his mind from Ukrainian into English, which is not his native language, he turned to the vice president and asked, “Let me ask you a question—what kind of diplomacy are you talking about?”

What worked in Ukrainian did not land the same way in English. The phrasing, the cadence—what might have sounded assertive in Kyiv came across as combative in Washington. Suddenly, this was no longer just a dispute over policy. It was a collision of cultures, of expectations, of the brutal difference between war and politics.

Had he read the room differently—had he stepped back, defused, taken the fight off camera—perhaps things would have played out another way. But Zelenskyy, in that moment, could not afford to recalibrate. He saw this as his only shot to make the best argument for his country. And so he kept talking, making his case for security guarantees and offering his point of view as to why diplomacy alone had not worked for his country.

And while Trump does not mind confrontation—indeed, he thrives on it—he does not take kindly to being lectured. But Zelenskyy, exhausted, miscalculated. His message, urgent as it was, did not land in the right format for the audience he had.

The result was inevitable. A misfire of diplomacy. A clash of tones and expectations. A moment that might have been salvaged, had it been played differently.

Instead, it all ended in the most predictable way: a fiasco that was never supposed to happen.

And so, by the time the cameras were escorted out—by the time the ceremonial press conference was canceled, by the time the lunch was scrapped—the only thing left on the table was the rift, already wide enough that it was hard to imagine how they would come back from it.

Trump had entered the Oval Office on Friday morning hoping to announce a rare-earth mineral deal that would, in his mind, resolve 95% of the war. By the time the last insult had been hurled, the deal had gone up in smoke.

It was a spectacle of unmasked realpolitik. Zelenskyy, once the celebrated hero of the Western world, found himself cast in the unfamiliar role of a petitioner—a man with no cards left to play. At times, he seemed close to tears. But if he had hoped for sympathy, he found none. Vance saw him as disrespectful and ungrateful. Trump, backed into a corner, did what he does best—escalated.

Zelenskyy had, in Trump’s view, “overplayed” his hand. And so, in a development that no screenwriter would dare propose, Sen. Lindsey Graham materialized outside the West Wing, declaring that Zelenskyy should either change or resign.

By nightfall, it was already history.

Diplomatic Fictions and the Ghost of Kosovo

Secretary Mike Rubio and Mike Waltz entered the room, their message clear. They asked Zelenskyy to leave the White House.

Minutes later, the word spread.

“Zelenskyy’s leaving,” someone tipped off the press.

We rushed toward the entrance of the West Wing, cameras ready, recorders rolling. The doors swung open.

Zelenskyy entered his black SUV quickly and sat there, waiting. His delegation climbed into the black van parked next to him. His motorcade pulled away from the White House without a statement, without a triumphant declaration, without the rare-earth mineral deal. Instead, there was only the sound of Trump’s Truth Social post, fired off into the world: Zelenskyy is “not ready for peace.” The breakdown in communication was playing out live for the whole world to see.

It was impossible not to recall Rambouillet.

In 1999, Serbia—then still Yugoslavia—was given an ultimatum in a château outside Paris: allow NATO troops on your territory or else. When Serbia refused, NATO bombed them for 78 days without U.N. Security Council approval. Russia, watching closely, learned the lesson. When Russia entered Ukraine to annex its territory, Putin cited Kosovo as precedent.

The West, which had previously insisted that Kosovo was an exception, found itself perplexed.

Now we watch history do what it does best—repeat, but in reverse.

In Kosovo, Serbia’s territorial sovereignty was overruled by NATO’s strategic interests. These days, Ukraine finds itself in Serbia’s old position—forced to accept, as Belgrade once was, that international law is ultimately decided by who has the biggest guns. The scale is different, but the essential framework remains: accept the terms or face the consequences.

Zelenskyy has made it abundantly clear that, while NATO membership remains an aspiration, he wants Western troops stationed in Ukraine as a security guarantee. The trouble is that this is NATO-by-another-name, and for Russia, that is the war’s original sin.

In Rambouillet, the Yugoslav delegation was not in disagreement with the political aspects of the proposed peace settlement. What they could not accept were the military provisions, which, as outlined in the Christopher Hill plan, mandated the presence of NATO forces in Kosovo.

For Belgrade, this was the red line.

Serbian President Milan Milutinović, representing the Yugoslav government at the talks, hinted at a potential compromise—one that involved an international presence in Kosovo but not one operating under NATO’s direct command. It was clear to all parties that what he envisioned were forces drawn from Russia, Greece, or Western European states—troops that could serve as a buffer, a stabilizing force, without being directly subordinate to the U.S. president via NATO’s chain of command.

For Yugoslavia, accepting NATO boots on the ground meant conceding not just Kosovo, but sovereignty itself. For the West, particularly Washington, that was a security guarantee.

Now, history echoes.

Zelenskyy wants NATO in Ukraine—not as full membership, but as part of the rare-earth minerals deal, a backdoor security arrangement under a different name. Trump knows this is a red line for Putin, one he cannot sell to Russia. He wants to end the war without a NATO military presence but is open to some form of peacekeeping force—after a deal is signed, not before.

De facto security guarantees are a deadlock that must be unlocked in terms acceptable to both Ukraine and Russia. If left unresolved until the end, there is a big chance it will all collapse—just as it did in Rambouillet.

After what happened in the Oval Office on Friday, Ukraine and Russia are nowhere near sitting in the same room, shaking hands, and smiling for the cameras with Trump.

But geopolitics is rarely linear. All of that can change on a whim—a shift in battlefield momentum, a recalibration of interests, a leader deciding that the cost of war is finally too high. Deals that seem impossible one day become inevitable the next.

For now, the impasse holds. But history moves fast.

Zelenskyy walked into Downing Street on Saturday, greeted by Keir Starmer in front of the black door marked No. 10. Starmer embraced him warmly.

“You have the full backing across the United Kingdom, and we stand with you and Ukraine for as long as it may take,” Starmer told him.

“I am determined to find a path that ends Russia’s illegal war and ensures a just and lasting peace that secures Ukraine’s future sovereignty and security,” Starmer declared.

While Zelenskyy stood in Downing Street making his case for continued support, his finance minister, Sergii Marchenko, tuned in via video call—not to discuss battlefield strategy, but to secure more funding.

On the other end of the line, the UK’s chancellor, Rachel Reeves, signed off on £2.6 billion in loans to Ukraine, part of a financial mechanism tied to frozen Russian assets, known as Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration Loans. The premise is simple: the loan will be repaid using the profits generated from Russian assets held in the West—£236 billion of which sit in Europe alone.

It’s not just the UK. The G7, a club of wealthy democracies, announced a $50 billion package for Ukraine last year under the same scheme, to be disbursed gradually until 2027.

Macron also did his round of diplomacy. “I want the Americans to understand that withdrawing support to Ukraine is not in their interest,” he said.

Trump, ever the dealmaker, has no interest in moral crusades or geopolitical abstractions. His position is this: Make a deal, make peace, get rich, move on. America, which has spent three years funneling money and weapons into the abyss, finally gets to cash back in.

It is a very different approach from the one taken by Biden, Macron, Boris Johnson, Sunak, who looked at the war as a moral high ground, a battle between light and darkness. For Trump, it is business, not theology.

And yet, there is something way too familiar in the way Ukraine is presented with ultimatum.

Serbia in 1999: Take the deal, or we bomb.

Ukraine in 2025: Take the deal, or you fight alone.

Washington, D.C. | March 25, 1999

The question to Bill Clinton came direct and unadorned.

“Mr. President, yesterday you listed three objectives of the airstrikes, but among them was not a demand that Milosevic return to the negotiating table if he signed a peace agreement. Yet others in the administration are saying this morning that is a precondition for ending the strike. What are the facts?”

Clinton exhaled. “Well, he has to choose peace, or we have to try to limit his ability to make war. That’s what we’re trying to do. And I think that’s been very clear.”

He said it had been obvious all along.

“If you look at what happened at the Rambouillet talks, the arrangement was basically supported by all of Europe, the United States, the Kosovars. The Russians agreed it was a fair agreement—they did not agree to NATO’s military involvement, but they agreed it was fair. Only Mr. Milosevic and the Serbs declined to deal with the evident responsibility they have to choose the path of peace instead of the path of aggression and war.”“So I think that it is clear — I don’t know how to make it any clearer — that we either have to have a choice for peace by Serbia, not just stopping the killing for an hour or two, but a choice for peace, or we will do our best to limit their ability to make war on those people.”

The key difference now is that Trump wants discontinuity from Clinton’s era diplomacy in peace settlements centered around territorial disputes. He does not want NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine, while Zelenskyy—whose mindset has been shaped by the same diplomatic philosophy that stretches from Madeleine Albright to Blinken, from Clinton to Biden—is pushing for the very strategy of the past. It is Bill Clinton’s approach Zelenskyy is leaning on.

Trump may not be a student of history, but his instinct tells him it won’t work. And he’s not wrong. The reason it isn’t working—the reason Putin keeps pushing for more—is rooted in a broken promise: the quiet unraveling of NATO’s eastern expansion agreement, set in motion under Bill Clinton through the Partnership for Peace. A cooperation between former Soviet states and NATO.

Partnership for Peace according to Clinton was “a process that leads to the enlargement of NATO.” At a speech in Prague Clinton  said : “While the Partnership is not NATO membership, neither is it a permanent holding room. It changes the entire NATO dialog so that now the question is no longer whether NATO will take on new members but when and how.”

What was once an understanding—that NATO would not push further into Russia’s sphere—became a slow, deliberate march eastward. And each time the West advanced, Moscow answered. The war in Ukraine is not an anomaly; it is another chapter in a long, unfinished book, one Bill Clinton began writing and one Zelenskyy is now expected to bring to life through a security guarantee that would embed NATO within Ukraine, in all but name.

Zelenskyy sees NATO as Ukraine’s ultimate safeguard. Putin sees it as an existential threat. Trump, in his own way, sees it as a liability. And that is why, despite all the weapons, all the aid, all the diplomatic summits, Ukraine remains stuck in the same geopolitical cycle—fighting for a security guarantee that history suggests will always come with conditions and absence of lasting peace.

But at some point, one has to ask—perhaps naively—Can Russia and America ever be friends? Can Russia and the EU? Can Russia and the UK?

George W. Bush tried, briefly. There was a moment, a flicker of possibility. Then, under Clinton, at one point, Putin reportedly asked him if Russia could join NATO. That, of course, did not land well. The answer was never truly in doubt.

NATO’s sphere of influence has always functioned on a simple principle: keep Russia on its toes. The mistrust is deep, ingrained, fundamental. No one in the Western world truly trusts Putin, and after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the UK, Britain in particular has no appetite for concessions.

And that, in the end, is where things stand geopolitically. Russia, isolated. The EU overlaying on the U.S. Ukraine, caught in between, fighting for a future that remains as uncertain as ever.

The Fight for Survival

Watching Zelenskyy fight for his survival in front of Trump and J.D. Vance—forced to repeat “thank you” like a child seeking approval—was almost unbearable to watch. Zelenskyy looked like a bullied child caught in the crossfire, pleading for support while knowing deep down that the tide had already turned against him. Secretary Rubio, watching the exchange, seemed to shrink into the sofa, sinking deeper with every word.

Standing among the journalists, I felt the weight of it—the helplessness, the desperation, the futility. The images of war, the personal stories of destruction and loss, all dissolving into the brutal arithmetic that governs every conflict: wars end in peace agreements, but the dead remain dead. And for what?

Yes, Trump has closed many deals in his life, but never one where the stakes were measured in lost homes, shattered families, and entire cities reduced to rubble. Never one where the people at the table were not merely negotiating profits and losses, but survival itself.

What was missing in that room was not just diplomacy—it was an awareness of the rawness of it all. The grief, the exhaustion, the unbearable weight borne by a country that had been promised that if it just fought a little longer, endured a little more, victory would come.

What was missing was a mediator. Someone with the experience to recognize when a negotiation is spiraling, to call for a break, to take Zelenskyy aside into a quiet room—away from the cameras and the posturing—and tell him how to recalibrate before it was too late. Instead, the moment was allowed to collapse under the weight of its own miscalculations. A chance for diplomacy, squandered.

Trump’s position is clear: Zelenskyy’s maximalist demands—Russia paying for reconstruction, NATO troops on the ground—will not bring him the result he wants. If the goal is to get all parties to the table for a historic peace deal, then insisting on terms that Moscow will never accept is, in Trump’s view, a self-defeating strategy.

From Trump’s perspective, what happened at the White House was not just an argument—it was Zelenskyy actively undermining his efforts to broker peace. While Trump himself has not publicly demanded an apology, his allies have been less restrained. They believe that Zelenskyy should apologize.

Zelenskyy, however, sees no reason to do so. In his mind, he did nothing wrong. He made his case, stood his ground. As president, that is his job—to advocate and try to get the best position for his country. Zelenskyy wants the “advantage.” Trump is not looking to side with Ukraine; he says he wants “peace.”

For all the grand geopolitical justifications, this war has, in many ways, been a civil war—one fought between people who share a history, a language, a culture. And when wars cut that deep, resentment lingers long after the last missile falls.

Zelenskyy did not come to Washington to start a fight with the most powerful man in the world; he came seeking acknowledgment of his people’s pain, recognition of what had been lost. He came to secure a deal that would lead to “no surprises.” Instead, the whole thing went off the rails in the biggest surprise of all.

He left empty-handed. But so did Trump and the United States.

And the curtain flung open. No more illusions, no more carefully curated narratives. The raw mechanics of power stood exposed, stark and unadorned.

American “aid” is not aid. It is a loan, as Trump now delights in pointing out. And once the ledger is open, once the terms are reexamined, the question arises—what exactly is Ukraine supposed to be grateful for?

For being encouraged for three years to stay in a war it cannot win on its own?

For watching its cities hollowed out while Western analysts wax lyrical about the “cost of freedom”?

For a NATO dream dangled like a carrot—until the horse ran off the cliff and the world watched, shocked, as if no one could have predicted the outcome?

For having to pay back for generations what was billed as the generosity of the EU, UK, and U.S.?

Why did no one say from the start: We are giving you loans, not just aid. You will have to pay them back, even as your country spends decades trying to rebuild.

Does anyone truly believe that the Ukrainian people will forget what happened to their homes, their families, their lives—what happened to them, in the 21st century, in the middle of Europe? Did the people of former Yugoslavia ever forget? Did any war-torn nation simply shake hands and move on as if history had not burned itself into their collective memory?

Does anyone, realistically, believe that at the signing of an American-brokered deal, Ukrainians will suddenly shift their attitudes toward Russia? That they will forgive because Washington says the time has come?

Zelenskyy put it in plain words how his people feel about Putin: “For us, they are killers.”

And no dose of American optimism can change that.

The truth rarely acknowledged is that the war in Ukraine has never been solely about Ukraine. For Putin, it has always been about NATO’s reach—where it stops, and more importantly, where it doesn’t. For the EU, it was about its own security. For Boris Johnson, it was about legacy—a historic chance to cast himself as a Churchillian figure on the world stage. And for Washington, it was an opportunity too convenient to ignore: a chance to fight a sworn enemy by proxy, without the cost of American lives.

Zelenskyy, willing or not, found himself at the center of it all, sold on a promise—that Ukraine would join the EU and NATO, that history would reward his defiance. He traded the suit for the trenches, turned war into a diplomatic round robin, from Vogue covers to solemn addresses before national parliaments, rallying the world while watching his country fall apart in real time.

It is as tragic, in its own way, as the war in the former Yugoslavia—a nation shattered, its people left to sift through the ruins while the great powers that shaped its fate move on to the next geopolitical crisis.

And now, at last, the reckoning.

At some point, even the most willing proxy must be informed that the game is over, that the returns no longer justify the investment. That was the message delivered in the Oval Office. Sign the deal, Zelenskyy was told, or make peace with Russia on your own terms. But you will have to fight it out alone.

And then, the door was closed.

Trump is a negotiator who prides himself on his ability to walk away from the table. What happened on the last day of February was not the end of the road, of course.

Wars do not end so neatly. And even when they end by decree, they do not end in people’s souls and minds. That is the deepest problem here. They linger, they decay, they metastasize into other conflicts, other crises. But the shift is clear. Ukraine, much like Serbia before it, is discovering the real weight of American power.

Trump the businessman, Trump the negotiator, understands the value of a dramatic exit. He knew Zelenskyy would come back to the table. And when the Ukrainian president called to say he was ready to return, Trump, as a man who knows he holds all the cards, simply replied: Not today.

It was a message, not just to Zelenskyy, but to the world.

American support is not permanent. It is not unconditional.

And when the time comes, it is as easily revoked as it was granted.

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