It was less a diplomatic summit than a televised takedown. ‘Great television’, Donald Trump grinned at the end. Volodymyr Zelensky, who had come to the White House seeking American backing for a minerals deal and tolerable terms of peace, didn’t just leave empty handed. That meeting plunged Ukraine into its worst crisis since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Most analysis of Friday’s blow-up between the US and Ukrainian presidents has overlooked Trump’s ‘great television’ quip. But it’s key to understanding the whole fiasco. It suggests the slapdown was to play to the gallery of American citizens watching on. It was to broadcast one message: Donald J Trump and JD Vance are putting ‘America First’. To underscore the point, within minutes, White House social-media accounts posted a picture of the Stars and Stripes alongside the tagline, ‘AMERICA FIRST’.
When the vice-president started to unload both barrels on Zelensky, it was clear Vance’s real beef was not with the actual Ukrainian president, but with the feverish caricature that Zelensky has become for the American right. For too many MAGA followers, Zelensky and Ukraine have come to embody the globalist elite they loathe – warmongering, corrupt and more interested in those who live far away than Americans at home. To them, Ukraine is not a country fighting for independence, but a cesspool of deep-state cash and shady ‘biolabs’. This is this idol that Trump and Vance wanted to topple in the White House, in front of the world’s media.
This is why Vance snarled, ‘Have you said thank you once?’, even though he surely knows Zelensky has thanked America and its leaders for their support endless times. For the Trumpists, the US’s support for Ukraine’s self-defence has come to symbolise how America is supposedly being taken advantage of by the rest of the world.
Another telling moment was when Trump launched into an extended monologue about Russiagate and Hunter Biden. He even growled that he and Putin ‘went through a hell of a lot’ together. Trump wasn’t really discussing geopolitics here. He was settling scores with those Democrats who promoted the Russiagate conspiracy theory during his first presidency.
Zelensky’s absorption into the American culture war is not his fault, but it is a disaster for Ukraine. As a result, his pleas – about Russia’s tendency to ignore ceasefires, or about Ukraine’s heroism or its gratitude to the US – are falling on deaf ears. To Trump’s base, Zelensky is not a legitimate leader, but an international ‘welfare queen’.
Perhaps Zelensky does not yet grasp how much has changed since Trump took over. After the debacle in the White House, American officials issued a clear warning: Trump is playing a new game, and Zelensky has missed it. ‘There is a new sheriff in town’, as Vance said in Munich last month – and his name is Donald J Trump.
This sheriff demands respect. What Trump wants is for Zelensky to show gratitude and voice no dissent. Zelensky’s ill-judged suggestion in the Oval Office that the consequences of Russia’s aggression might one day be felt on US soil seemed especially to enrage Trump. After all, Trump is promising a new ‘golden age’ for America. The Ukrainian president was suggesting there might be some cracks in that plan.
Perhaps Zelensky could have played the supplicant, signalling that he gets what Trump wants. Ukraine’s pride – no doubt one reason for its stunning resistance to Russia – makes that difficult.
But would groveling have changed anything in the grand scheme of things? If Zelensky had knelt before the new emperor, would he have earned his support? Trump sometimes bends to flattery, but Vance seemed determined to ensure that wouldn’t happen this time. He wanted to humiliate Zelensky, not find a compromise.
Could there also have been a geopolitical motive for scolding Zelensky so harshly? Beyond getting the TV moment, perhaps Trump and Vance want Zelensky’s silence so that they can dictate peace terms to him. As Trump wrote on Truth Social after the row, Zelensky’s questioning of the viability of a ceasefire is apparently proof he’s ‘not ready for peace’. ‘Ready’ seems to mean that the Ukrainians should mute any objections to a deal that’s being carved up over their heads between the White House and the Kremlin.
While Zelensky was clearly shocked by the frosty reception he got in the White House, he should also be wary of the warm words coming from Europe. European leaders’ pledges to back Ukraine now ring as hollow as America’s talk of achieving a just peace. This is not just because Europe lacks the military muscle (Keir Starmer’s vow of ‘boots on the ground’ came hedged with pleas for US backup). It’s because Ukraine is also a kind of culture-war cipher for the likes of Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen. They see the Ukrainians as fighting for ‘European values’ and the post-Cold War status quo, rather than their own territory and survival.
Since Friday, French president Emmanuel Macron has thanked Ukraine for fighting for ‘the security of Europe’. Belgium’s PM said Ukrainians were fighting ‘our fight’. Sweden’s PM said they were fighting for the freedom of ‘all of Europe’ – words echoed by Starmer when he hosted Zelensky in London on Sunday. In the narcissistic imagination of Europe’s post-historical leaders, Ukrainians are dying to allow Western Europe to continue its holiday from history, where it need not worry too much about the messiness of geopolitics.
Zelensky is understandably keen to hedge his bets. Every weapon or tranche of funding secured in Europe is undoubtedly a win for him. But Europe is in no position to secure Ukraine’s future alone. Not just because it lacks the means, but also because its leaders have no genuine interest in securing Ukraine’s sovereignty. The EU and Starmer, after all, do not really believe in self-determination or in the importance of nationhood.
If Trump’s ‘peace’ plans come to nothing, Ukraine will return to the position it found itself at the beginning of the war: able to call only on meagre support and reliant on its own strength and wit to fight back. After three years, only Ukraine knows how much it has left to give.
Jacob Reynolds is a writer based in London and Brussels.
