European leaders are running about clutching their heads in panic after the debacle in the White House. Germany’s Economy Minister, (a ‘green’!), has called for the immediate release of $3.1 billion (I am not sure if this is German or EU money because Al-Jazeera doesn’t say) [2] for weapons for Ukraine. Anything to prolong the agony a little more.
Commentary on the wretched propaganda told by the Guardian about this encounter
The main line is that what happened was a pre-planned ambush by Vance and Trump. This is clearly not what happened. Anyone can see that by watching the video, linked above.
The Guardian sets the stage with this:
There was a hint of trouble to come when Zelenskyy arrived at the West Wing wearing a dark, long-sleeved shirt – not a suit – and Trump greeted him with a handshake and sarcasm: “Wow, look, you’re all dressed up!”
This is supposed, of course, to paint Trump as the “aggressor”. In fact Trump handled this quite skilfully. Zelensky’s outfit is part of his media messaging and agenda setting – about needing military support. Since Trump is trying the path of peace he had to call out this messaging.
According to the Guardian’s David Smith “Never has a US president bullied and berated an adversary,…”. This didn’t happen. The video is there for all to see. Trump is the President of the US and he was in his own office. Zelensky is the leader of a small client state. It was Zelensky who kept trying to talk over Trump. Then, “Zelenskyy found himself ambushed by Trump and his serpentine vice-president, JD Vance. He was expected to sit back and take a beating from Nurse Ratched and Miss Trunchbull. He refused.”. As they say; “didn’t happen”. What I saw was Trump asserting his office and being supported by his Vice President, handling a bolshy and disrespectful leader of a client state who didn’t know when to shut up. Vance tried to help him; let’s litigate our disagreements out of view of the media. (Leaving aside the characteristic liberal personal abuse. Is it just me or have other people noticed that progressive liberals are ultra sensitive about not mocking people for personal characteristics but frequently and quickly descend into the most foul-mouthed abuse of people who disagree with them?)
Finger jabbing, he lectured Zelenskyy: “I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media … You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”
In fact what happens [3.25] is this. Vance talks about how the current administration is trying to put matters onto a diplomatic track after the failed ‘chest-thumping” of the Biden era. Zelensky then launches into the usual totally unbalanced Ukrainian nationalist version of the Donbas conflict which he uses to claim that Putin is not ready for diplomacy. (See below for brief discussion of this). After this, Zelensky attacks Vance by saying “(so)… what kind of diplomacy do you mean?” Vance, very briefly, gestures with a slightly bent finger and says “I am talking about the kind of diplomacy that is going to end the destruction of your country”. He then continues “I think it’s disrespectful for you…” When we pay attention to what actually happened we can see that the version presented by David Smith is a complete misrepresentation of what happened. If I hadn’t played back the clip I would have been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and just say he was carelessly imposing his liberal perceptual framework on what happened, (confirmation bias), but, looking at the clip carefully it is impossible for me at any rate to believe that David Smith is not engaged in some degree of conscious fabrication. Let’s call it “story-telling”.
At one point the Ukrainian ambassador would put her head in her hands. She was all of us.
“us” being – the liberal media, presumably, who are panting, still, after this pointless war, because, apparently, despite all the very concrete evidence to the contrary they still believe that they can bomb the world into liberal democratic heaven.
Trump, pointing an accusing finger and descending into his worst self from the presidential debates, admonished: “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with world war three and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have.”
This was Trump on very good form. There was an exchange which went something like this. Trump said “You have no cards to play”. Zelensky said, “I am not playing cards”, and then Trump responded with this point about about “gambling with World War Three”. What is “worst self” about this? The “accusing finger” was in reality waving up and down in quite a friendly and cautioning way.
And so it goes on. This is just some kind of bad-mouthing drivel. It isn’t worth commenting on.
The British correspondent is no more truthful than the US one:
But the meeting on Friday degenerated after Zelenskyy suggested that Vance, a skeptic of US support for Ukraine, should come to the country to see the destruction from the invasion and that Russia was responsible for the continued fighting.
In fact the meeting started to come unstuck when Zelensky attacks Vance with “what kind of diplomacy are you talking about” which is a full-on attack on the entire position of the US administration in relation to Ukraine, and follows Vance talking about the value of the diplomatic track. Seeing a war zone might have an emotional impact but it is not necessary to do that to be able to analyse the causes of a war and find a path to peace. So; this line by Andrew Roth is just propaganda.
During the public part of the meeting, Trump and Vance took turns to berate Zelenskyy, with Vance accusing him of carrying out “publicity tours” and Trump telling him: “You’re not really in a good position right now.”
At one point Vance demanded: “Have you said thank you once?”
Again. “berated”. This is not just an accidental word. “berate” has the connotation of aggressive and emotionally shouting at someone. In reality, Vance and Trump were mostly calm. Vance did not “demand”. He asked. It is Zelensky who, if anyone, is “berating”, as he continually tries to talk over the President. (Trump at one point lets anger get the better of him when Zelensky makes a remark about Putin claiming to be able to take Kiev in 3 days, that suggests that he would have been quite happy to see Putin take Kiev in 2, which is actually a kind of remark part witty, part anger, which people sometimes use to let off a bit of steam).
The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser described it as “the most shocking behavior by Trump and Vance I’ve ever seen in the Oval Office. An ambush.”
If she did, she was watching a different press conference.
Andrew Roth also produces this mythic statement:
Even as Zelenskyy arrived at the White House, Trump sought to physically dominate the Ukrainian leader, telling reporters that Zelenskyy, who was wearing a black turtleneck, was “all dressed up”. Zelenskyy has not appeared in public in a suit since the Russian full-scale invasion three years ago, preferring to wear military-style clothing instead. Trump has complained about the Ukrainian leader’s style of dress.
I have commented on this point above. (Of course there never has been a “full-scale invasion”).
What we see here is indicative of a certain problem in Western liberal media. They see what they want to see. Their world-view is that Zelensky is some kind of hero, fighting an aggressive Russian state which is anti gay and trans rights, (they may be unaware that much of Ukraine is also orthodox and conservative). Trump, because he is in favour of low-taxes and small government rather than the liberal-progressive agenda of large government and social engineering, as well as being on the conservative side of contemporary ideological questions, is an enemy. (I think the failure of the Russia smear campaign makes them hate him even more). And, then, everything is fitted into this view. This is a process called ‘confirmation bias’, by psychologists. But, confirmation bias depends on a willingness to not actively seek out the truth. It is just this, this lack of intellectual curiosity, that is the desire to want to see things are they really are, which seems to be endemic in the West. In my last post I noticed that this lack of intellectual curiosity about the world around them is also present in political leaders. I don’t want to disrespect autistic people, but there is something autistic about this.
The Guardian’s Russia correspondent also runs the fake story about an “ambush”: “Putin stays silent but Russian politicians and media outlets crow with delight after the ambush of Ukraine’s leader”.
See the Guardian for all 3 stories [1]
The lust for war in Europe
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs, political class politician, and former Prime Minister of Estonia said, in response to Zelensky’s folly in the White House:
Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.
As we mentioned above the German Economy Minister has called for a huge rush of weapons cash to Kiev.
Let’s see. Is Europe (and the UK) really going to double their military ‘aid’ to Ukraine to enable them to fight on even without US support? (Even if Trump does not cut off the flow straight away, the current approved by Congress pot is nearly exhausted and it is hard to see yet another massive pot being proposed by the administration and passed by Congress. In other words, it is in fact, game over anyway for US military aid to Ukraine; another reason why Zelensky would have done well to listen to Vance and Trump). If Europe does “step up”, the same two, unanswered by any European leader that I am aware of questions, remain; how will Kiev deal with their manpower shortage? And, what is the actual path to victory over Russia since no one wants to give Ukraine enough or advanced enough weapons to actually defeat Russia?
I am watching Europe (and the UK) with great interest. Are they really going to “take up the challenge” as the horribly out of her depth Kaja Kallas wants?
The lust for war and the liberal media propaganda
These two go together, The liberal media tell their fabrications to massage public opinion, (and convince themselves of their own worldview). The inept political class, who, apparently, may even get some of their ideas about the world by reading the liberal media and taking it as ‘truth’, delude themselves into their phantasy world. In this world they are heroes, fighting for deep human values, ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘trans rights’, ‘tolerance’, against a monster who wants to spread authoritarian darkness over the world. It is a kind of magical fairy-tale world with them as the unblemished innocents, bravely fighting the monsters from outside the boundaries of the known world. With the rather ugly touch that it is young men from Ukraine and Russia who are doing the actual bleeding and dying while they enjoy their myths.
Commentary on the video
Unfortunately no one calls out Zelensky for his claim that in 2014 Putin occupied Crimea and “parts of our country” and ‘killed people’. The annexation of Crimea was very nearly bloodless so he is talking about Donbas. Here is is stating the standard Ukrainian lie that the rebellion in Donbas against the coup-imposed extreme nationalist regime in Kiev was purely a “Russian occupation”. This line negates and obliterates the real rights and feelings of the millions of ethnic Russian and “pro-Russian” or even neutral people in Eastern Ukraine who were disenfranchised when the President they had elected was toppled in favour of a liberal, initially, and soon, extreme nationalist, regime. The roots of the regional dimension of this conflict lie in this; the regime in Kiev secretly, that is they don’t openly admit it to their Western partners, wages a conflict against that section of the population in Eastern Ukraine which is not interested in Ukrainian nationalism. (Naturally, they have a derogatory word for them. I can’t find it – for some reason Google does not provide the answer). Trump senses something wrong and says 2015 – but probably doesn’t understand enough about this aspect of the conflict to be able to unpick Zelensky’s false narrative.
Zelensky talks about Minsk and then claims that Putin broke the ceasefire. It may be that Russia broke some aspects of Minsk 1. But, again, this is so one-sided. We have on record Merkel’s statement/claim that she signed the Minsk agreements in bad faith specifically to buy time for the Kiev regime to arm.
As Trump is talking about Zelensky hating Putin, (he remembers to say understandably and tries to balance it with a comment about Russia), we can see Zelensky getting extremely emotional. It is probably this emotion which comes out when he attacks the Vice President Vance [3.35], “What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about?”. The problem with this is that it is a direct attack on the whole business of the administration in relation to the Ukraine conflict.
Once the row kicks off, poor Zelensky tries the line about “if we don’t stop Putin now, he will attack you next”. It seems, of course, unlikely that Russia is going to attack the US any time soon. Zelensky then argues with and continually talks over Trump. He is sitting in the Oval office and he represents a small client state. And, as Vice President Vance says, it is not a good idea to litigate in front of the media. Zelensky is behaving like he is on a talk show in Ukraine arguing with another politician. This was another huge mistake by Zelensky.
One comment. Despite my general, (and quite strong reservations about Trump on all kinds of levels, his support for Israel’s war crimes, his mistaken attitude to global warming and others), I think in this clip he comes out rather well. He is combinative and not rude and more or less stays on topic, except at the end when we have a characteristic long diatribe about the fake Russia smear campaign. However; I don’t think he responded to Zelensky’s point about the Ukrainian people’s attitude to the ceasefire. [7.43] However; if Zelensky is trying to say that Ukrainians (in the regime part of the country) are against a ceasefire that seems to be at odds with what I have been reading about polling in Ukraine, that there is increasing support of negotiations. This is a November 2024 Gallup poll which says that over 50% want a “quick, negotiated” end to the war. [3] Zelensky may be referring to this recent poll reported in the “Kiev Independent” that apparently says, (I can only read the headline), “A total of 91% of Ukrainians surveyed oppose peace negotiations between the U.S. and Russia without Ukraine’s participation”. [4] Which, would not be the same thing as “oppose a ceasefire”. (I don’t know the source of the poll). Zelensky does not come out of this well. He lets his emotions rule him at a time when it would have been much wiser to keep quiet. Surely; he knows the format of these “leaders meet the press” events; and, just as Vance said, the idea is to keep the arguments off-camera?
Notes
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/trump-zelenskyy-shouting-match-oval-office https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/trump-zelenskyy-meeting-ukraine-aid-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/01/russia-trump-zelenskyy-ukraine-leader-oval-office-putin
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/2/28/donald-trump-live-news-zelenskyy-in-dc-for-talks-on-rare-minerals-deal
- https://news.gallup.com/poll/653495/half-ukrainians-quick-negotiated-end-war.aspx also
- https://kyivindependent.com/91-of-ukrainian-oppose-peace-talks-without-ukraines-participation-poll-shows/