U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) is hopeful that the president of Ukraine will come to his senses and sign the minerals deal put forward by President Donald Trump.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky sent Trump a letter this week saying he’s ready to make peace and sign a deal with the U.S. This comes after Zelensky got into a heated exchange with Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance in the Oval Office last week.
I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace.
None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under…
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 4, 2025
Palmer told WVNN’s “The Dale Jackson Show” Wednesday that it’s in Ukraine’s best interest to work with Trump and sign the economic deal.
“It’s been over for about two years,” Palmer said. “The Ukrainians have been sending officials up here. Zelensky sent people over to meet with me. I’ve been telling them for two years that the American public was not going to continue to support sending them money or sending them weapons for free, and I literally suggested to them that they needed to take a page out of what Britain did pre-World War II, and approach this from a Lend Lease perspective, where they would buy our weapons and use their critical minerals and rare earth elements as collateral. And I think that Zelensky and and the Ukrainian government didn’t believe that.”
The congressman expressed frustration over Zelenky’s actions in the Oval Office last week.
“If anyone says that was a setup, it was set up by Democrats,” he argued. “Senator Chris Murphy told Zelensky to try to get more out of the deal. And if you know anything about Donald Trump, when you make a deal, that’s the deal. And so he completely screwed that up.”
Palmer agrees with Trump that in order for the war to end Ukraine will have to make some concessions.
“What I told the Ukrainian officials is that this war may wind up ending as a ceasefire, a long term ceasefire,” he said. “That they’ve got to come to grips with the fact that the Russians are going to occupy the Donbas and Crimea. That doesn’t mean Ukraine has to give up their claim to it. But the reality is…they have no way to win this war, and we’re not going to escalate it by sending in US troops. The best deal that they can get is the deal that Donald Trump gave them.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
