‘Living In A Bubble’: How Zelensky Miscalculated Trump

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics,

For three years in the United States, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was heralded as the second coming of Winston Churchill. He earned standing ovations from Congress, posed for glossy photo shoots, and received regular envoys of politicians, celebrities, and press from the West.

But one moment in the Oval Office may have ended it all.

Zelensky publicly crossed his greatest ally, calling into question before the press whether President Trump and Vice President Vance, now seeking to negotiate a peace deal, really understood both the land war in his country and his enemy, Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was summarily kicked out of the White House.

The Ukrainian leader, who at times rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in defiance during the fiery bilateral meeting, either fundamentally misunderstood, or entirely miscalculated, the current moment in American politics. His alliance with the United States, if not the fate of his country, is imperiled.

“He doesn’t recognize that Nov. 6 was a paradigm shift in American politics, including for our policy toward Ukraine,” a White House official told RealClearPolitics after Zelensky departed the White House with a stone-faced delegation in tow but without a signed deal to facilitate U.S. mining of rare minerals in Ukraine.

Zelensky had failed to understand “the new political landscape,” the official said before adding that the Ukrainian leader had been “living in a pro-Ukrainian American bubble.”

The drama that played out at the White House was unprecedented. It certainly was not scripted. One source familiar with preparations for the dialogue told RCP, “None of us expected [Zelensky] to act like that.” Indeed, the administration had hoped that Friday would mark the beginning of the end of the conflict, and they expected to bask in glowing headlines after leaders from both nations signed the minerals deal on camera in the East Room. Instead, Zelensky was sent packing, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham was left fuming.

“I busted my ass to help Ukraine,” Graham told Fox News from the White House lawn. Easily the greatest and oldest Republican friend of Kyiv, the senator arrived on campus to celebrate a breakthrough. From the moment Russian tanks rolled across the border, he had pushed for more aid and even led a congressional delegation into the war zone to make his case.

His advice to Zelensky ahead of the Oval Office meeting? “Do not let the media or anybody else get you into an argument with President Trump,” Graham said. And then Zelensky did exactly that over the course of little more than an hour.

Even former President Joe Biden found Zelensky taxing at times. When the Ukrainian leader pressed for more aid immediately after the U.S. greenlit another $1 billion in military assistance in October 2022, Biden reportedly replied that the American people were already being quite generous and that Zelensky ought to show a bit more gratitude.

NBC News reported at the time that Biden even raised his voice in exasperation, a rarity for the former president. Despite the private kerfuffle, the two remained in lockstep publicly. Biden often said, “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” pledging to support the beleaguered nation for “as long as it takes.”

Trump exploded that framework the moment he won the election last November. He has called for an end to the war and advanced what the previous administration thought unconscionable: a peace deal that required both sides to make concessions.

Notably, without weighing in on any final details of an overarching agreement, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, during their separate state visits to the White House, both thanked Trump for beginning the process of peace talks.

In the Oval Office Friday, Trump made his position explicit by proclaiming that in the conflict, “I’m in the middle” and “I’m for both” Ukraine and Russia. The president had also previously ruled out what Zelensky wants the most – a security guarantee backed by the U.S.

Trump has argued, however, that a minerals deal would be just as good. “We’re going to be working over there. We’ll be on the land, and you know, that way it’s this sort of automatic security,” he said Wednesday, “because nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said publicly that the agreement was as good as done and insisted that all that was required were the signatures. “There is no more negotiation,” he told Fox News Friday morning in an interview that seemed designed to preclude any last-minute changes. “There is nothing else.”

Zelensky may not have received that message. The transcript of his Oval Office meeting now serves as a sort of Rorschach test on both sides of the Atlantic, and within the U.S. Congress, as allies and partisans read in their interpretation of who was to blame for the meeting going off the rails.

It began civilly enough.

Seated before an unlit fireplace and wearing signature blue suit and red tie, Trump called it “an honor” to receive Zelensky, who was at his left sporting a black sweatshirt and matching cargo pants, then proceeded to praise “the unbelievably brave” Ukrainian soldiers. Disagreements simmered under the surface at first and only erupted after the vice president made explicit the new paradigm.

“We tried the pathway of Joe Biden of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions,” Vance said. “What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy.”

This was too much for Zelensky, who has watched Russia repeatedly make diplomatic agreements and break them with ease. The Ukrainian leader laid out the history from the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 to the invasion of Eastern Crimea in 2014 before demanding to know, “What kind of diplomacy, J.D., you are speaking about?”

When Vance replied that “the kind of diplomacy” was the sort that would end “the destruction of your country,” Zelensky tried to interject. Vance told him it was “disrespectful” to litigate the issue in public before the media, only for Zelensky to again interrupt, protesting, “Have you ever been to Ukraine?” An extended discourse followed, with allegations of ingratitude. Trump only erupted when Zelensky warned that the U.S. would “feel” the threat of Russia “in the future.”

“You’re gambling with World War III,” Trump told Zelensky, warning him, “you’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel.” The media was escorted out shortly afterward, and the White House rescinded its invitation to sign a deal. Said the president in a statement posted on social media, Zelensky “disrespected the United States” and “can come back when he is ready for peace.”

Outside observers quickly concluded that the Ukrainian had run afoul of Trump-era diplomatic norms. “Zelensky misread the deeply polarized nature of the Ukraine issue in the U.S. and failed to adjust his approach accordingly,” Zineb Riboua, a scholar at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, told RCP.

“Trump thrives on flattery, control, and, most of all, the illusion of dominance. He expects negotiations to happen on his terms, and any public challenge is not just a disagreement – it’s a personal insult,” Riboua added before noting that Trump holds at least two major grudges against Zelensky for what Republicans see as his perceived preference for Democrats and his unwillingness to bring the war to an end earlier. If the Ukrainian leader does not make an allowance for that skepticism and update his diplomatic approach, the scholar concluded, “he risks losing what little leverage he has left.”

The Ukrainian delegation seemed to acknowledge the error. Zelensky took to the social media website formerly known as Twitter to thank the United States, and no fewer than 25 other world leaders, after Vance admonished him in the Oval Office for not expressing enough gratitude. He also abruptly canceled remarks that were scheduled to take place in downtown Washington, D.C., at the Hudson Institute, a source familiar confirmed to RCP.

But Zelensky did keep his interview with Bret Baier of Fox News. He repeatedly refused, however, to offer what Trump seems to want most now: an apology. All the same, the Ukrainian leader suggested that his relationship with the spurned president could be salvaged. “Yes, of course, because it’s relations more than two presidents,” he told Baier. “It’s the historical relations, strong relations between our people.”