His Deals, Our Blood: How Trump’s Language Sounds In Ukraine

-Essay-

KYIV — I don’t want to talk about politics or my personal attitude toward any of the participants in the meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday. I don’t want to evaluate it. Instead, I want to focus on the language. As a writer, that is what attracted my attention as I was listening to representatives of the United States speak about the Russia-Ukraine war.

This war has been draining Ukrainians for three years. Thousands of Ukrainians have died. By now, it has touched every one of us. We speak about it in terms of pain, hope, hatred — emotional categories that define us as human beings with hearts, with conscience, with hope.

Trump spoke about the war as a business affair.

As if the war never existed

Even the vocabulary he used — words like “deal” — reflects this perspective. This incredibly complex decision, this crucial document that could save millions of lives, that could change the course of history, was framed solely as a business initiative. For him, it was just a “deal,” a game of cards where Ukraine’s president does not hold the winning hand.

The war only mattered when he started promising his voters that he would end it.

The entire choice of words gave the impression that — after three years of raging war — people who had never talked about it before suddenly joined the conversation. As if, for them, this war never existed. As if it had only come into focus when Trump’s election campaign began, when he started promising his voters that he would end this war — somehow — in 24 hours.

Until then, there had been no talk, no war. And suddenly, he finds himself at the negotiating table and sees the war in front of him for the first time. As his aide put it, “I’ve seen the stories.” Once again, the language gives it away.

Showing their cards

Here is this group of people trying to speak about tragedy, pain, bloodshed, hope and the shattered dreams of millions in a great country bleeding out as it struggles to defend itself against an aggressor. Yet, they speak about it in business terms — as if it were just another deal to be signed, a transaction primarily benefiting themselves, their voters, but also, in some way, accommodating all parties. A completely different mindset, a different interpretation of reality.

While we were talking about values, the person across from us was simply calculating business interests.

When we speak about this war, we focus on meanings — what fills us, what matters to us, and why it matters. We speak about freedom not as an abstract ideal but as a genuine value, something people willingly take up arms to defend. When we speak about democracy, we highlight the value for which people are ready to stand against a powerful aggressor.

When we speak about dignity, we mean the courage to face the bullets of the occupier, to stand in defiance, to refuse to look away, to remain true to ourselves.

This language has become second nature to us over the years of this Great War — it is natural, integral, inseparable from our reality. And now, suddenly, we face people who speak to us about a “deal,” who tell us that we have no cards in our hand. That, in the end, this is just business. Only business. Nothing personal. We’re simply trying to make a deal that will benefit us — and perhaps you as well.

Keeping hope alive

This disconnect in experiences, this stark divide in perspectives and values, stood out painfully, burned into the consciousness. Because suddenly, the person sitting across from us at the negotiating table laid down their cards — and they were nothing like what we had expected.

This is something important, painful, unfamiliar to us. I believe this is something we will have to deal with — and something we should probably take into account. Because while we were speaking about values, the person across from us was simply calculating business interests and strategies.

That’s the world we live in. Is it a good thing? Clearly, there is nothing good about it. Does this mean everything is ending? No, it’s just the beginning. And what is good in all of this? Anything that keeps hope alive.