In an editorial, The Kyiv Independent says:

It’s time to say it plainly. America’s leadership has switched sides in the war. The American people have not, and they should speak up.

In the past several weeks, the U.S. leadership has demonstrated explicit hostility towards Ukraine and aligned its rhetoric and policy with Russia.

The animosity culminated today when U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at a meeting in the Oval Office.

After a hostile meeting, Zelensky left the White House. Trump reportedly ordered the Ukrainian delegation out.

Let this sink in. The president of a battered Ukraine, an ally of the U.S., became the first world leader in history to be kicked out of the White House. Not a dictator, not a disgraced politician — the president of Ukraine, a country suffering from the worst invasion in the 21st century. The country that the U.S. administration swore to bring peace to.

In an ugly exchange, the president and vice president joined forces to admonish Zelensky for “not being grateful” enough for the help Ukraine was getting.

To that, Zelensky reminded them that he had thanked the American people multiple times, including earlier that day. But it appears that gratitude to the American people isn’t what Trump and Vance were looking for — they wanted him to grovel and prostrate himself in front of Trump. Kiss the ring.

For sure, Zelensky could have done a better job composing himself and restraining his reactions, but it’s fair to say that he was put in a situation he couldn’t win. If he let Trump and Vance — and apparently, it takes two of them to win a verbal argument against one non-native English speaker — continue their line of attack on Ukraine, unchecked, he would be seen as weak both at home and abroad. Weakness is something a country at war can’t afford to project.

Trump didn’t get into the same kind of arguments with other world leaders who publicly disagreed with him during recent meetings. He smiled and shrugged when French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer corrected him and Vance on their provocative and false statements about Europe.

Will Trump and Vance hit Vladimir Putin with the same attitude they showed towards Zelensky and scold the Russian leader for attacking Ukraine? By now, we’ve seen enough to know for sure that they won’t. If any ring-kissing happens in their meeting with Putin, the ring will be Russian.

During the heated exchange in the Oval Office, Trump even complained that Zelensky has “hatred” for Putin — the man who ordered an invasion of his country, killing thousands of civilians — saying it would be “tough” for him to “make a deal with that kind of hate.”

After the meeting, Trump claimed that Zelensky didn’t want peace. That’s a dangerous lie.

Let’s be clear. There is only one force in the world that can bring peace unilaterally, at any moment: Russia. Putin can order his troops to leave Ukraine and end the war any minute he wants. But Putin doesn’t want peace, he wants Ukraine.

Zelensky, and Ukraine, want a fair peace — one that would bring security to the embattled country and pay honor to the enormous price that it paid, losing the best of its people in a bloody fight against the invader. [Continue reading…]