Kremlin West

By publicly berating Zelensky at the White House, Trump and Vance made clear that Washington aligns with Moscow on the axis of fascism

A painting on a sidewalk in the eastern city of Kharkiv commemorates the defiance of Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea. On the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, an enemy warship ordered them to surrender. Their commander’s retort soon became a national rallying cry: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself!” (c. Martin Kuz)

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So they expected him to kneel?

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance might have assumed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would genuflect before them during his visit to the White House today. After all, Mafia Don and his mucus-voiced consigliere had hosted the leaders of France and England earlier in the week, and both Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer stooped just enough to placate the American mob bosses.

But Zelensky, a comedian and actor in his pre-political life, veered off script. In an extraordinary act of resistance before news cameras, he refused to bow as Trump and Vance shouted pro-Russian talking points and insisted that he grovel for past U.S. support of Ukraine. (I encourage you to watch video of the full exchange here.) In that charged moment, Zelensky, a man of short stature but towering courage, stood taller than either Macron or Starmer and exposed Trump and Vance as Moscow’s tin-hearted handmaidens.

In the presence of a genuine wartime leader, whose tone and demeanor remained respectful even as they assailed him with insults and condescension, Trump and Vance engaged in a disgraceful display of what now passes for American strength. Zelensky never flinched, for the simple, sobering reason that he and his fellow citizens in Ukraine live under the daily threat of death. If the Americans expected him to cower in the face of a mere verbal barrage, they succeeded only in exposing their own intellectual and moral weakness.

Trump and Vance, so gleeful when punching down at smaller countries, directed none of their impotent fury at Vladmir Putin, who launched a genocidal war against Ukraine three years ago this month. After a quarter-century in power, the Russian dictator must feel unbridled joy as the Trump administration finishes its remodeling of the White House into Kremlin West, a place where fascism has found its home in America.

Westerners may think that Zelensky should have appeased the Trump-Vance tag team and gone along with their rare minerals shakedown, if only on the remote chance that they might provide security guarantees to Ukraine. But his unwillingness to beg reveals a consistent moral code that applies to the man as much as his country — a refusal to surrender to tyrants, whether in Washington or Moscow. His actions emphasize a stark reality for his people that I mentioned during a recent radio interview, a reality as alien to Trump and Vance as the concept of valor. Ukrainians understand from their nation’s history that there is one thing vastly worse than suffering through war: living under Russian rule.

In a predictable omission, as Trump and Vance berated Zelensky for showing insufficient gratitude for U.S. aid, they failed to mention that former President Joe Biden supplied almost all of that assistance. The opposition to supporting Ukraine among MAGA minions in Congress has intensified with each year of the war, stoked by Trump from the moment his bosom buddy Putin sent troops over the border. Trump’s meltdown in the White House in front of the leader of a nation whose people fight and die every day to preserve their democracy gives the lie to any talk of American isolationism. He has made explicit — to Ukraine and the rest of Europe — that the United States aligns with Russia on the axis of fascism.

On the first day of Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Russian warship Moskva trained its guns on Snake Island in the Black Sea, where the Ukrainian military had stationed a small detachment of soldiers. In a radio call, the ship ordered them to surrender. The undaunted Ukrainian commander offered a retort that soon became a national rallying cry: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.”

In Washington today, without losing his composure like the spineless men around him, Zelensky delivered a similar message that he never articulated. As I watched him withstand the smug thuggery of Trump and Vance, a variation on the commander’s immortal words occurred to me, a credo for those of us who still care about democracy in the U.S., Ukraine and around the world.

American White House, go fuck yourself.