Zelensky bristled at his berating by Trump and Vance. After three years of war, what did they expect?

Kyiv (CNN) — The sky felt like it split over Kyiv.

On a horizon where drones and airstrikes have killed 47 civilians in Ukraine in the past 10 days, superlatives rained: the most consequential moment in the war since Russia’s invasion; the ugliest personality clash — between a 48-year-old comedian turned wartime leader and a septuagenarian billionaire turned US president; the most significant turning point in European history since 1989 or even 1945.

After Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky found himself berated for lack of gratitude on live television by US President Donald Trump and his Vice President JD Vance on Friday, Ukraine seemed immediately unsure whether to be furious at his treatment – after their collective survival of three years of Russian bombardment and savagery – at the hands of wealthy American elites, or to panickedly seek remedy in Kyiv’s relationship with the ally it likely cannot endure without.

Ukrainian military channels on Telegram fumed they would rather die on their feet, than beg on their knees. Kyiv officials exuded solidarity. But the carpet under their feet was suddenly gone.

There is “nothing we can do to fix this,” a senior US official told me – adding that the fix must come from Zelensky. Trump-whisperer Sen. Lindsey Graham speculated Zelensky should fix it fast or step aside. US politicians are used to their words having an outsized impact, but Friday they rippled across the established norms of European security and made a continent, just about recovered from the horrific whiplash of the past 10 days, suddenly check their seatbelts again.

Zelensky’s task on Friday had been simple and almost complete, a draft agreement on a critical minerals deal waiting to be signed. The mood in his meeting was adequately convivial – not even derailed by his tough rhetoric on Putin. The wartime leader’s wardrobe choices – a black, long-sleeved shirt that he’s always worn – may not have been to Trump’s liking, a US official told me, but did not overturn the apple cart. It took Vance – who often attends, but rarely speaks in, Trump’s international meetings – to do that.

Misinformation is often the luxury of the privileged. The basic essentials of your life – electricity, food and water – must be in place to afford the privilege of propagating or believing untruths. When Zelensky was confronted with a vice-presidential lecture on Russian diplomacy – which since 2014 has openly advanced little but Moscow’s military goals in Ukraine, he talked back. Well, he tried to.

When Trump later told him he had “no cards,” Zelensky replied: “I am not playing cards.” Ukrainians are not playing cards but dying in a rate less than the fantastical figures Trump keeps citing, though at an adequately horrific pace of hundreds a week, that they too want peace.

This is the gruesome gulf between the parties in the Oval Office. On one side, a country where the facts of war are personal as they involve relatives and friends who are never coming home, and homes that will never be returned to. On the other, America’s right flank feeling scorned because its aid – given to defeat a decades-long adversary at no cost of American life – had not been received with enough gratitude.

“You’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing,” said Trump, as though the cost of tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives was not somehow a sign of appreciation.

Zelensky later said in an interview with Fox News he didn’t feel he owed Trump an apology, but he thought the relationship could be salvaged.

Trump and Vance have never seen a war like this up close, but are still disgusted by it. They seem to have felt Zelensky, soaked in war’s horror for three years, needed a lecture about the peace anyone who had seen war would yearn for. Moneyed ignorance loudly lectured exhausted experience.

Where do we go from here? Zelensky has probably endured the defining moment of his presidency. He must either magically heal this rift, somehow survive without America, or else step aside and let someone else try – the last perhaps the easiest. Yet stepping down from power, as Moscow would like, could spark a crisis on the front lines, eroding political clarity, and in the legitimacy of the government in Kyiv, where parliamentary processes or flawed wartime elections would likely stumble in producing a clean successor.

There are no good choices ahead, no sure bets. Yet one thing is comforting since I came back to Kyiv. Europe’s security – after three daunting weeks of the Trump administration questioning democracy and alliances across the continent – may seem in crisis from the comfortable perspective in London, or Paris, or Munich. Somehow in Kyiv after three years, the doubts feel lighter. Waves of drones come nightly here, yet the city adapts, the people endure, the lights stay on.

This resilience makes Zelensky’s bristling at being lectured by Vance on his nation’s sacrifice and peril easier to understand. As one Ukrainian civilian summarized it last night: “Dignity is also a value. If Russia cannot destroy it, why does the US think it can?”

This story has been updated.

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