As I was watching the Oval Office standoff between Trump/Vance and Zelenskyy unfolding on live television yesterday, many thoughts fired through my mind:

“Is this actually happening?”

“Are they actually saying this to his face?”

“Oh no, no. This is very bad. This is terrible.”

I went off the live stream and jumped on X and a couple of group chats with friends, hoping that none of what I just saw happened or that it somehow wasn’t that bad. But it did happen. It was as bad as it looked – much worse, actually.

After 40 minutes of spinning lies and straight-up Kremlin talking points, Trump and Vance exploded after Zelenskyy asked Vance how could a ceasefire with Putin hold if there were no additional security guaranties. They ganged up on him.

They tried to humiliate Zelenskyy and teach him a lesson in “gratitude” – right there, on live TV. It looked like two mafia thugs with fragile egos were cornering an unfortunate person who just had to do business with them.

Some conversations later, I tried to look at the situation differently. Did Zelenskyy just make a huge mistake when he countered Vance’s statement with a question? Was he wrong to do the negotiation part in public – and thus responsible for screwing up the minerals deal and heading back home with nothing?

Yes, Vance’s statement on the effectiveness of trying diplomacy with Putin was wrong – and deliberately so. But Zelenskyy has been dealing with Trump for months now – and for quite some time before that during his first term.

He should’ve know how to handle himself. He should’ve sat through the whole thing quietly, tune up his charm and let the big-mouthed burger kings speak.

Knowing perfectly well who he’s dealing with and how much both Trump and Vance dislike him, maybe he just needed to mute his pride and focus on getting the deal done.

Maybe he did fuck it all up.

But then another round of conversations with my wife, a hundred Whatsapp messages and one phone call with my dad later, this fuck-up hypothesis didn’t feel right.

The idea that everything collapsed simply because of Zelensky’s fatal diplomatic mistake seemed suspicious.

Foreign diplomatic visits always have a certain degree of awkwardness to them. State leaders regularly misunderstand each other or even disagree but they always find ways to carefully laugh it off or ignore these frictions. They smile, shake hands and move on.

Even Macron, arguably the most skillful diplomat in Europe at the moment, corrected Trump’s lies a few times during their joint press conference at the White House earlier just this week. Nobody bullied him for that.

Zelensky’s situation clearly stood out.

Assuming that (1) the US were looking at a good deal that satisfied their foreign policy interests, (2) went through to invite Zelensky to Washington to sign the agreement, and (3) then made an impulsive, hysterical U-turn on live TV just because Zelensky made the mistake of challenging Vance’s words is… not believable. This is just not how international deals work.

It seems much more likely that the whole visit was a planned ambush. An easy way for Trump to either push a far more exploitative deal on Ukraine behind closed doors or – if Zelensky refused to sign it – to blame Zelensky for blowing the whole thing up.

I don’t think the live standoff was deliberately planned, but I do think Vance used the tiniest opportunity to spin it out of control and create a media bomb.

A loud scandal is much better for Trump than having to explain the simple truth about America’s new Ukraine policy: it was always going to sacrifice and abandon Ukraine and get the hell out of that part of the world.

Trump was always going to make a transactional deal with Putin and withdraw from European security matters. He mentioned it many times before. Why would he suddenly change his mind and decide to defend a victim against a bigger bully? That’s not Trump’s style. That was never going to be his way of handling this war.

Yesterday’s live standoff was an improvisation, but the outcome of Zelensky’s visit was destined to fail anyway – because Trump never wanted it to succeed.

No amount of respectful gestures and soothing speeches from Zelensky could change that. There are no right words that can convince a person if that person refuses to listen.

We can all say the quiet part out loud now:

Zelensky’s Oval Office standoff was simply a ceremonial sacrifice.

The US is abandoning Ukraine and will even start allying up with Russia wherever it feels like it. It is now up to Ukraine and the rest of Europe to stand up to Russia’s imperialist aggression and reach peace through strength together.