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A White House meeting between Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday 28 February 2025, the US President and Vice President launched a series of attacks on the Ukrainian president, making provocative and false accusations against him, talking over him, repeatedly prodding him, and accusing him of being insufficiently grateful for American support that the Trump administration wishes had never been given and which it would not commit to maintaining.
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Following the meeting, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy's being told to leave, Donald Trump announced that President Zelenskyy was not ready for peace because he wrongly imagined that America's involvement would give him an advantage in negotiations with Russia. He added that Zelenskyy had disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office.
 
The same message has been repeated by most Republican Representatives and Senators, again accusing Zelenskyy of being ill-mannered. In an interview on BBC Radio, Stephen Moore, who served as economic advisor to Donald Trump during his first term and was senior economic advisor during the 2024 presidential campaign, said, "the visit from Zelenskyy was a huge, huge setback for the Ukrainians, in terms of the belligerence and the sense of entitlement [of Zelenskyy]: I don't understand why Zelenskyy played it that way."
 
Moore also expressed outrage at the thought that the USA might now be considered an unreliable partner, boasting that the USA had spent almost $200 billion supporting Ukraine, but ignoring the fact that these funds had been committed by the previous administration, whose judgement the present administration deplores.  
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Was it true, as Donald Trump's supporters keep repeating, that Zelenskyy was beligerent and ungrateful? How badly did Zelenskyy handle Trump and Vance in the Oval Office? We thought he replied with dignity and restraint to questions that seemed at first to be innocent and quickly turned into provocations and insults.
 
But now The Economist - not at all a friend of the incumbency - tells us that Zelenksyy behaved foolishly in allowing himself to be goaded. Did he? We've set out the transcript of the final stage of the meeting, and invite readers to judge for themselves.