On Friday, in what should have been a routine diplomatic meeting in the Oval Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was subjected to something that looked much closer to an ambush than a diplomatic discussion around ceasefires and rare earth minerals. Seated across from President Trump, flanked by Vice President J.D. Vance, rising star of the isolationist right and one of the most vocal opponents of continued U.S. aid to Ukraine, Zelensky had come to Washington seeking assurances. His mission was straightforward: to secure the support his country needs to withstand Russia’s ongoing invasion and to remind the United States of the promises it made to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty. Instead, before a bank of cameras and a captive global audience, he found himself cornered.
What unfolded was more political theatre than diplomacy. Towards the end of the 50-minute meeting, Trump and Vance pressed Zelensky with accusations casting him as ungrateful and reckless, a foreign leader exploiting American generosity while dragging the United States toward global catastrophe. On live television, they prodded him to admit that U.S. support for Ukraine risked triggering a wider war. When Zelensky refused the premise, when he pushed back against the distortions and steered the conversation to the principles at stake, and to Ukraine’s right to defend itself and the security guarantees pledged long ago, his hosts shifted tactics. They moved from interrogation to condescension, leaving Zelensky to sit, tight-lipped and composed, as the subtext became plain: America’s patience — and more importantly its chequebook balance — had run out.
Watching the spectacle, I was reminded of a moment from twelve years ago. It was late 2013, during the height of the EuroMaidan protests in Kyiv, Ukraine’s most determined and defining stand against Moscow’s influence. What began as a rejection of the Kremlin’s grip over the Ukrainian government soon transformed into a national declaration of independence, not only from Moscow’s dominance but from the post-Soviet decay that had kept Ukraine trapped in a state of limbo. Independence Square — Maidan in Ukrainian — became the uprising’s epicentre.
For thirteen weeks, over the course of that brutally cold winter, as many as 800,000 protesters held their ground in the heart of the city amid sub-zero temperatures and brutal crackdowns. To keep riot police at bay, they built barricades of tires and set them ablaze with gasoline-filled bottles, creating a thick, impenetrable smokescreen. Layers of ash raised the square’s ground level by three feet, while frozen pools formed where police fire hoses had extinguished the flames.
At one point during those freezing days, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared among the protesters, handing out cookies in a symbolic gesture of solidarity. Her visit came just a day after Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a forceful statement: “The United States stands with the people of Ukraine. They deserve better.” For a brief moment, it felt as though Washington meant it.
It was a three-month battle between Ukrainians and a pro-Kremlin government — one that seemed, at the time, to end in total victory for the people.
When the clashes finally ceased, Independence Square resembled a battlefield. The air was filled with the scent of burning tires. Ash and frozen pools covered the ground. Among the rubble lay forgotten Molotov cocktails, their rags still stoppered in bottles while dark patches of clotted blood stained the cobblestones.
'Trump and Vance may not have been interested in that history, or in honouring those promises made by the West — promises of sovereignty, of security, of survival. But the truth is, Ukraine’s struggle will not end until those promises are kept.'
Shrines sprang up for the fallen. Photographs of those who died — mostly men, young and old, smiling or solemn — were tacked onto makeshift memorials. They became known as the “Heavenly Hundred.”
I remember the feeling of being watched as I passed their faces, their still eyes frozen in those pictures. I also remember stopping by a ragged tent, dropping money into a donation box, and asking the scruffy men inside what they planned to do next, now that everything was over.
“None of this is over,” they replied in unison. “It’s only the beginning.”
They were not prophets, but they knew. They knew everything, even then.
I don’t know what happened to those guys. But sometimes I think they’re still there. At times, it feels as if they linger, hidden among the countless blue and yellow flags now planted in the soil of Independence Square, each inscribed with the name of a fallen Ukrainian soldier. Their families placed them in remembrance, a tribute to lives lost. Now, the flags stretch like a vast sea before the Independence Monument, a stark reminder that the cost of Ukraine’s independence is still being paid.
This, I believe, is what President Volodymyr Zelensky was trying to convey last Friday in the Oval Office seeking justice, only to be ambushed in a grotesque spectacle.
It seemed as if Trump and J.D. Vance, seated in their positions of power beside Zelensky, were working from a shared script, goading him into a misstep that could be used against him. The strategy was transparent: paint Zelensky as “ungrateful” on live television, further eroding American sympathy for Ukraine and laying the rhetorical groundwork for the inevitable withdrawal of U.S. financial aid.
Trump, eager to appease Putin and refocus America’s strategic attention on containing China, waited for Zelensky to falter. And for a time, Zelensky navigated the tightrope skillfully, expressing gratitude for past aid while refusing to accept outright lies about the war. Again and again, he steered the conversation back to what mattered: the need for a real security guarantee, the one the Western world had promised thirty years ago but never delivered.
In 1994, Ukraine surrendered its post-Soviet nuclear arsenal as part of the Budapest Memorandum to prevent nuclear proliferation. In exchange, the United States, Britain, France, and Russia pledged to safeguard Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. That agreement was supposed to be a bulwark against precisely the kind of invasion Ukraine now endures. It obviously failed.
Now, one hundred thousand dead Ukrainians, perhaps more, are testament to the emptiness of words without action. Zelensky tried to remind Trump of this and was promptly shown the door.
Zelensky had every right to remind his American hosts of the Budapest Memorandum. But they weren’t listening. Instead, they accused him of “gambling with World War Three,” a naked falsehood meant to deflect blame away from the real instigator of the war, Vladimir Putin. The irony was impossible to ignore. Trump, a man who openly admires Putin and who attempted to subvert American democracy, was branding the leader of a democratic nation fighting for its survival as a “dictator.”
The American audience watching at home may not have noticed the deeper implications. But in Ukraine, the response was immediate. Rather than blaming Zelensky for the humiliation, Ukrainians were outraged at the position of the White House. They perceived the meeting as a calculated affront to their leader, who was earnestly seeking support from the United States. It was seen as an intentional humiliation; a message from Washington to Kyiv. The message: You’re on your own.
And the Oval Office debacle was only part of the message. Just days earlier, the United States, alongside Russia and North Korea, voted against a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine. It was an astonishing moment. Not just a diplomatic embarrassment, but a signal that the rules-based order the United States helped build after World War II is beginning to collapse. America, once the self-appointed leader of the free world, now finds itself voting with dictatorships and turning its back on the very principles it once claimed to stand for.
The American public, for its part, seems ambivalent. A recent poll found that only 51 per cent support continued military aid to Ukraine. Nearly half of Americans are indifferent to the fate of Europe. Increasingly, they are hostile not only to their adversaries but to their allies. It is a return to the isolationist, transactional politics of the 1940s, driven by economic decline and a dwindling appetite for global leadership. For decades, Washington has searched for ways to minimize its financial obligations to NATO, a search that can be traced back to the Nixon administration.
For Ukraine, the meaning of the Oval Office meeting was clear: the security guarantees of 1994 meant nothing. Justice, it turns out, is too expensive for the United States. Trump and Vance may not have been interested in that history, or in honouring those promises made by the West — promises of sovereignty, of security, of survival. But the truth is, Ukraine’s struggle will not end until those promises are kept.
Sergey Maidukov is a Ukrainian writer, author of Life on the run and Deadly bonds, written for the US publishing house Rowman & Littlefield (Bloomsbury). Both were written in English, in the midst of war. His journalism has appeared in numerous Western publications.
Main image: U.S. President Donald Trump (C) and Vice President JD Vance meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office at the White House on February 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump and Zelensky are meeting today to negotiate a preliminary agreement on sharing Ukraine’s mineral resources that Trump says will allow America to recoup aid provided to Kyiv while supporting Ukraine’s economy. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)