Zelensky on Trump and the Ukraine Endgame: Exclusive

Read More: Volodymyr Zelensky Is TIME’s 2022 Person of the Year

As he took his seat in the Oval Office, Zelensky placed the belt on a side table near his right elbow, planning to reach over and hand it to Trump in front of the assembled journalists. Instead, as the televised briefing began, Zelensky reached for another one of his gifts. It was a folder containing a series of gruesome photographs, showing Ukrainian prisoners of war after their time in Russian captivity. Some of their bodies were grotesquely emaciated. Others showed signs of torture. “That’s tough stuff,” Trump said, his face leaden, as he took the photos from Zelensky and began leafing through them. 

Those pictures, according to some U.S. officials, marked the point when the meeting went wrong. Had Zelensky offered the championship belt, the gesture might have lightened the mood. The photos had the opposite effect. They seemed to get Trump’s guard up, as though he were being blamed for the suffering of those soldiers. Still, even today, Zelensky does not regret his decision to present these images. He had been trying to reach beyond Trump’s transactional instincts, beyond his need for flattery, and appeal to Trump as a human being. “He has family, loved ones, children. He has to feel the things that every person feels,” Zelensky says. “What I wanted to show were my values. But then, well, the conversation went in another direction.”