Is Donald Trump ready to abandon Zelensky? Senior US officials floated the idea yesterday Sunday that the Ukrainian president may be forced to leave after his unprecedented clash with his US counterpart on Friday. Zelensky himself responded that it “will not be easy” to replace him.

The anger in the ranks of Republicans in the US over Friday’s White House meeting fiasco doesn’t seem to be abating. “We need a leader that we can negotiate with, (who can) negotiate with the Russians at some point and end this war,” Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Walch, assessed.

“If it becomes clear that President Zelensky, whether for personal reasons or political reasons, is deviating from the desire to end the fighting in his country, then I think we have a real problem,” Walch added, speaking to CNN.

Trump and Zelensky had an unprecedented confrontation at the White House on Friday, with both the US president and Vice President J.D. Vance accusing the Ukrainian leader of being ungrateful to the US for the aid it has provided to his country.

The diplomatic incident led to the cancellation of the signing of a deal on Ukrainian minerals. Washington believes the deal will link the US to Ukraine in a way that will prevent Russia from attacking its neighbor again.

The US president reiterated yesterday in a post on Truth Social that “Zelensky will have no choice but to back down and accept the conditions set by Trump.”

For his part the Ukrainian president said yesterday, before leaving London where he attended a summit on Ukraine attended by dozens of mainly European leaders, that he is ready to sign the mineral deal.

“The agreement remains on the table and will be signed if all sides are ready,” he noted. “We had agreed to sign the minerals agreement, so we are ready to sign it,” Zelenski said.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson did not seem convinced, saying “something has to change.”

“Either (Zelenski) will return to reason and to the negotiating table with gratitude, or someone else will have to lead the country to do so,” he said, speaking on the NBC television network.

On Friday, immediately after the White House confrontation, Republican Senator Linsey Graham said: “Zelensky needs to fundamentally change his stance or he needs to step down.”

Calling it “a huge opportunity lost“, Mike Walch said he was “shocked” by Zelensky’s attitude, and stressed that he had doubts about the Ukrainian president’s desire “to ever want to negotiate” with Russian President Vladimir Putin or “end this war“.

According to him, a deal to end the war would require “territorial concessions” from Ukraine and “security guarantees from Europe.”

Zelensky responded ironically by suggesting that Lindsey Graham should be given “Ukrainian citizenship“, as this would “start listening to him, as a citizen of Ukraine, to find out who should be president.”

“It will not be easy to replace me”

“It will not be easy to replace me,” the Ukrainian president said in an interview with British media today. “It’s not just about holding elections, they would also have to prevent me from running, and that would be a bit more complicated,” he assessed.

The Ukrainian president, who is seeking security guarantees for his country, also recalled that he has proposed to resign in exchange for Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

“If there is NATO and the end of the war, it will mean that I have completed my mission,” he reiterated last night.

Moreover, some Republicans in the US are also opposed to calls for Zelensky’s resignation. “Frankly, that would just plunge Ukraine into chaos,” Senator James Lankford assessed.

In a poll released yesterday by CBS, 52% of Americans said they favor support for Ukraine, compared with 4% who favor support for Russia, while 44% support neither side.

Several US newspapers reported that the Trump administration is considering cancelling military aid to Ukraine, which was already approved by the previous administration of Joe Biden.

The Republican president’s pivot to Russia and his phone call with Putin on Feb. 12 continue to cause consternation and shock in Europe and around the world.

Max Bergman an expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) assessed that “this puts the future of Ukraine, and the future of NATO, in doubt.“