Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Maintaining any further support from Washington requires the Ukrainian president to rise to the heights of diplomatic mastery.
On Friday afternoon, watching the coverage of Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting in Washington, we witnessed a harsh lesson in realpolitik—and a crash course in applied psychology.
A few conclusions from this depressing spectacle. The Ukrainian president turned out to be a worse psychologist than Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, who had paid a visit to the White House just before him and, to some extent, “charmed” the U.S. president. Zelensky, on the other hand, clearly did not fully understand the new rules of the game in relations with America. You can subtly tease Donald Trump in public (indeed, both Macron and Starmer did so), but one must calculate precisely when and how overtly. The Ukrainian leader lacked this calculation and this finesse.
Trump requires constant homage (which is not such a rare trait among politicians), but what he particularly expects from Zelensky is kowtowing. Instead, Zelensky thought it was a good idea to engage in a noisy squabble with the U.S. leader in the Oval Office—with a man who has infinite experience in insult duels, and for whom one of his life mottos is the famous “You’re fired.”
I write this with regret, but in this heated exchange of verbal punches, the Ukrainian president probably forgot that America was no longer an unconditional ally of his country, that today it demands much more from Ukraine than it promises, and that maintaining any further support from Washington requires him to rise to the heights of diplomatic mastery. To put it bluntly, the tone and style that may be politically effective in Kyiv do not necessarily have to work on the other side of the ocean.
Trump, on the other hand, was in his element. He knew that this was the kind of President his most ardent supporters wanted to see: unyielding, attacking, demolishing his adversaries. Even if that adversary is the leader of a country that has become the victim of a brutal aggression. Maybe even more so.
Trump, to put it mildly, has never been fond of either Ukraine or Zelensky himself. Today, there is just more anger and plain aversion in him towards the Ukrainian president. We may be irritated by this astonishing lack of empathy for the suffering nation. We may be surprised that Trump speaks at the same time in warm words about the “sacrifice made by the Soviet Union during World War II,” about the “wonderful business prospects” for the U.S. and Russia, or about the “nice Russian oligarchs.” That he calls Zelensky a “dictator” but steadfastly refuses to use the same term when asked about Putin.
Nevertheless, this is the kind of wonderland that Trump has invited us all to, and this is the world in which we live today. We can only hope for a quick awakening.
