WSJ What’s News - Future Uncertain for Ukraine After Trump-Zelensky Meeting Implodes

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

P.M. Edition for Feb. 28. What started as a polite meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky grew contentious and ended abruptly. WSJ national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon tells us what that means for both countries. Plus, Trump is expected to sign an executive order making English the official language of the U.S. We hear from WSJ White House reporter Meridith McGraw about what this means on a practical level. And reporter Drew FitzGerald discusses how venture-backed companies see an opening for contracts with the Pentagon. Finally, a new generation of instant coffee passes the snob test. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky turns contentious. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. You're gambling with World War III. And what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country. Plus English is expected to become the official language of the US. And how the new focus for the Defense Department may be creating an opening for military tech startups.

It's Friday, February 28th. I'm Alex Sosula for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. A meeting between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was cut short today after the two leaders got into a combative exchange. The session occurred shortly after Zelensky arrived at the White House, and Trump brought reporters into the Oval Office for what is typically a brief greeting.

But after a half hour of generally polite discussion, the tone of the session grew contentious. Your country is in big trouble. I know. You're not winning. You're not winning this. You have a damn good chance of coming out okay because of us. Mr. President, we are staying in our country, staying strong from the very beginning of the war.

We've been alone, and we are thankful. I said thanks in this cabinet. You haven't been allowed. We we gave you through this stupid president 350 billion dollars you we gave you military equipment you and your men are brave but they had to use our military what about us if you didn't have our military equipment you invited me to have our military equipment this war would have been over in two weeks in three days I heard it from Putin in three days. This is something maybe less in two weeks. Of course.

Yes, it's going to be a very hard thing to do business like this. I tell you, shortly after the exchange, the visit ended without the scheduled press conference or the signing of a mineral rights deal. I'm joined now by WSJ national security correspondent Michael Gordon. Michael, let's talk about what we just heard. Where does that leave us? Well, the significance of what happened today in the Oval Office is really quite striking. Throughout my decades of covering various negotiations with the Russians, a big lesson

is that it's vital that the West be unified and pushing back on Russian aggression and pushing back on Russia's demands and negotiations and what we saw in the Oval Office was a Conspicuous display of disunity not only between Ukraine and the Trump administration, but really implicitly Ukraine's European backers and the Trump administration, but really implicitly Ukraine's European backers in the Trump administration. What happened this week was there was a concerted effort by the Europeans to try to pull President Trump away from Russian positions and talking points that he seemingly appeared to embrace a week or two ago and persuade him to support a plan in which

there would be a peacekeeping force to secure any kind of settlement in Ukraine. President Macron was here on Monday, the British Prime Minister Stammer was here on Thursday. Last weekend, the Polish president was here. And what was supposed to have happened, according to the script, is Zelensky would come in, reset relations with the Trump administration, which had been a big test, make his appeal for security guarantees, and sign an agreement on the sharing of proceeds from Ukraine's minerals. And this would solidify the West's position vis-a-vis the Russians.

And what we saw was a diplomatic debacle. Where does this leave Ukraine? Well, it's a fast-moving situation. Just an hour or two after Zelensky was essentially kicked out of the White House. He's written a somewhat conciliatory tweet. And it's still possible some of the distrust between the two sides might be partially repaired. But it leaves a lot of things in flux. Is the United States going to continue providing military support to Ukraine?

How are they going to approach negotiations with the Russians if there's such disarray between the Ukrainian and American positions? What about the European plan to have what they call a reassurance force? All of that is now up in the air. And the Trump administration has shown a penchant to adjust its position rather quickly based on its sense of transactional diplomacy. What kind of deals can be cut, what kind of economic benefits can be obtained, mean threats are made on tariffs, threats are withdrawn on tariffs, Zelensky's evicted from the White House, perhaps there'll be a future meeting.

So I don't think we've had the last word on this as yet. That was WSJ National Security Correspondent Michael Gordon. yet. That was WSJ national security correspondent Michael Gordon. Meanwhile, we exclusively report that President Trump is planning to sign an executive order that would make English the official language of the U.S. That's according to White House officials. It would be the first time in its nearly 250 year history that the U.S. would have a national language.

Meredith McGraw, who covers the White House for WSJ, told me what this would mean on a practical level. The order is supposed to promote unity, establish some efficiency in the federal government, and according to the White House, provide a pathway to civic engagement. And it seems like it would give agencies some flexibility to decide when and how they would make accommodations for people. So it does seem like there's some wiggle room here. Even though it's declaring that English is the official language of the United States, it's allowing these agencies to decide to their discretion how they're going to implement this. Coming up, why defense startups see opportunity in Trump's Pentagon.

That's after the break. Silicon Valley-linked defense companies are seizing on their newfound influence in the Trump administration to address the Pentagon's shifting focus. My colleague Anthony Bansi asked telecom reporter Drew Fitzgerald how venture-backed companies see an opening to take business from traditional defense contractors. At a basic level, there are two types of companies that are seeking to do business with the Pentagon. And one is the old guard of large defense contractors, they're often called the Primes, that are the biggest and do business directly with the Department of Defense.

They sell very advanced weapons systems, airplanes, everything that you might see in the US military. The second group is loosely linked medley of startups and larger companies like Anderil, Palantir, and SpaceX that all have their roots in venture capital financing. And that crop of defense tech companies really sees a big opportunity now with all the upheaval happening at the Pentagon and with their newfound influence within the Trump administration. What drives the shift in the Pentagon's focus that provides openings to these companies? Some of the bigger companies that are looking to get into defense tech are already in that business seeing opportunity because of the ties that they have had to the Trump campaign and now have within the Trump administration and

at the same time there's been huge upheaval and that they have had to the Trump campaign and now have within the Trump administration. And at the same time, there's been huge upheaval and purges happening within the upper ranks of the DOD. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo just this month that told the department to look for areas where different programs could look for cost savings of up to 8% over five years to more efficiently use the Pentagon's resources. And some things are areas that newer defense tech companies are looking to grow their business

in like pilotless airplanes. Soterios Johnson How easy is it for these new companies to eventually win those contracts with the Department of Defense? Michael Soterios Johnson The old guard of defense contractors has had a long-standing relationship with a lot of the people making the decisions at the Department of Defense. And they also have a track record that they can lean on. So they can rest on that reputation when they're bidding for new contracts. One of the toughest parts of any business that's looking to sell to the military

is this so-called valley of death between when a newer technology company develops a prototype and the system or the program actually goes into production and starts becoming a real thing. A lot of startups fail before they get past that point, but if you look at a company like SpaceX, despite its relatively younger heritage, they've had no problems selling a lot of different tools and services to the U.S. military already. That was WSJ reporter Drew Fitzgerald speaking with Anthony Bansi. U.S. stocks see-sawed today after the testy White House meeting between President Trump

and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the end, major indexes closed higher. The Dow was up roughly 1.4 percent, and the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 were both up about 1.6 percent. Still, all three indexes notched losses for the month. Earlier, the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index, the Federal Reserve's preferred gauge of inflation, showed prices rising 2.6% in the 12 months through January, excluding volatile food and energy costs.

For some Americans, spring break is no longer in the budget. According to the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index released this week, people signaling plans to go on vacation dropped to the lowest level since 2021. WSJ Travel reporter Alison Poley told our Your Money Briefing podcast what's behind that. There's a lot of economic anxiety right now. There's threats of tariffs, inflation has been stubborn and persistent. And so people are just feeling it in their budget where they still do want to travel.

And we're not seeing a mass cancellation of trips, for example, but people are having to work harder to make it affordable. To hear more from Allison, check out our Your Money Briefing podcast next week. And finally, some mornings when I'm half awake after my baby woke me up far too early, I dread the 10 minutes or so that it takes for my drip coffee maker to do its thing. I've often found myself wishing that I could have coffee that's just as tasty but without the weight. But what's the alternative?

Turn to instant coffee? Actually, yeah. It turns out that a number of brands are now using innovative techniques like flash freezing and nitrogen flushes to avoid oxidation. The result is a new generation of instant coffee. And our reporter who did a blind taste test between her favorite beans and an instant version of the same said she could only detect a subtle difference. Coffee of last resort?

This is not. To find out more, follow the link we left in the show notes. And that's What's News for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap-up, What's News in Markets. Then on What's News Sunday, we'll have the next installment of our series, Building Influence, on China's trillion-dollar global infrastructure initiative. This one's about how Beijing found itself in a financial hole and how it's reworking the program to keep building up global influence. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Pierre Vienneme and Anthony Bansi,

with supervising producer Michael Kosmitis. Michael Laval wrote our theme music. Aisha Al-Muslim is our development producer, Scott Salloway and Chris Inslee are our deputy editors, and Philana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Osala. Thanks for listening.