As the United States prepares to welcome King Charles III and Queen Camilla for a high-stakes four-day state visit starting next Monday, a public exchange between US President Donald Trump and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, has injected unexpected tension into bilateral diplomatic preparations. The disagreement centers on Harry’s recent comments about Washington’s responsibility in the Ukraine conflict, made during an unannounced working trip to the war-torn country.
During his Kyiv visit, Harry — who stepped down from official royal duties alongside his wife Meghan Markle in 2020 — laid out a clear call for American leadership in upholding global security, without directly naming Trump. “The United States has a singular role in this story. Not only because of its power, but because when Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons, America was part of the assurance that Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders would be respected,” the Duke explained. He added that the US should “show that it can honour its international treaty obligations – not out of charity but out of its enduring role in global security and strategic stability.”
When reporters asked Trump for his reaction to Harry’s remarks ahead of the royal visit, the president pushed back firmly, downplaying the Duke’s standing as a representative of the United Kingdom. “Prince Harry is not speaking for the UK, that’s for sure. I think I am speaking for the UK more than Prince Harry,” Trump told reporters. He opened his response with informal well-wishes for Harry and Meghan, who recently completed a private trip to Australia, and noted that he appreciates the Duke’s input “very much.” When asked whether Harry would be included in official engagements during the King’s visit, Trump declined to give a direct answer, only expanding on his excitement for King Charles’ arrival.
“He’s a friend of mine. We’re really looking forward to it. We’ve spoken and we’re going to have a great time,” Trump said of the monarch. He added that all guests for the state visit events would be people who “love the UK,” a sentiment he said he shares, before offering unsolicited criticism of current UK policy directions. Trump argued that the UK government made “a big mistake on energy,” urging officials to open up more oil and gas extraction in the North Sea off Aberdeen. He also slammed the government’s immigration policies as another major misstep.
Beyond his diplomatic comments on Ukraine, Harry’s Ukraine trip continued a decades-long family legacy of landmine clearance advocacy. The Duke traveled to Bucha, just north of Kyiv, to observe demining operations run by the HALO Trust, a prominent international landmine clearance charity. During the visit, he tested an AI-powered drone designed for detecting hidden explosives, a technological advancement that marks a stark shift from the manual work his mother, Princess Diana, witnessed nearly 30 years prior.
“When my mother visited Angola nearly thirty years ago, deminers carried out their work on their hands and knees to uncover hidden explosives. Now they’re also using drones, AI and robots for greater precision and protection,” Harry noted. Diana’s 1997 visit to an active Angolan minefield, as a guest of the International Red Cross, is widely credited with catapulting the global landmine crisis into mainstream international attention, laying the groundwork for the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines.
The upcoming royal visit comes at a period of significant strain in US-UK relations, primarily over the ongoing conflict with Iran. Trump has repeatedly criticized Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government for refusing to join US offensive operations against Iran, and even blocked the US military from launching strikes against Iranian targets from UK bases. In March, Trump publicly derided Starmer, saying he was “not Winston Churchill.” Still, the US president has struck an optimistic tone about King Charles’ visit, saying it could “absolutely” help repair fractured bilateral ties. He described the King as a “fantastic man” in his comments to BBC News. As of Wednesday, the BBC confirmed that it had requested comment from both Buckingham Palace and the UK Foreign Office on the exchange between Trump and Prince Harry, and had not yet received a response.