“You have to respect that.” Then he paused again, looking down at the screen, and added: “But now we’re f—ed.” Ukrainian officer tells TIME journalist

>It was evening in Kyiv when the news from the White House arrived. My dinner mate, a colonel in the Ukrainian armed forces, got a call on his phone while raising a toast, and I could hear a muffled voice urging him to watch the footage from the Oval Office. We pulled it up on the colonel’s phone and sat there, slack jawed, the fat coagulating on our plates, as my President and his President went at each other like a pair of feuding in-laws.

>A long moment passed before my companion rendered his verdict. Molodets, he said of President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Well done.” I had rarely heard the officer praise his commander-in-chief. But he seemed genuinely impressed. “He pushed back,” he said of Zelensky. “You have to respect that.” Then he paused again, looking down at the screen, and added: “But now we’re f—ed.”

>Since the drama erupted on Friday, the reactions in Kyiv have mostly swung between these two emotions: pride in their leader for standing up to the most powerful man in the world, and fear of what the consequences would be for Ukraine, for its military and for its chances of surviving Russia’s invasion, which entered its fourth year last week. Among Zelensky’s aides and allies, no one seemed all that surprised by what he said to President Donald Trump, nor by the tone Zelensky took. In many ways, it was classic Zelensky—proud, stubborn, courageous to the point of recklessness, and rarely capable of bearing an insult in silence.

>But those closest to Zelensky knew the outburst had plenty of precedents—except, in the past, they played out behind closed doors. President Joe Biden had similar clashes with Zelensky early in the war. In the summer of 2022, the U.S. agreed to provide a massive package of military aid to Ukraine, including an advanced missile system that Biden withheld for months out of fear of drawing the U.S. deeper into the war. During a phone call to talk about the aid package, which was worth about a billion dollars, Zelensky took barely a minute to thank Biden before he began asking for more assistance. Biden lost his temper in response, chastising the Ukrainian leader for seeming ungrateful.

>About a year later, Zelensky received a similar dressing down from Ben Wallace, who was then the British Defense Minister. “People want to see gratitude,” Wallace said at a NATO summit in July 2023. “We’re not Amazon.” The U.K. had delivered so many de-mining vehicles to the Ukrainians, Wallace added, “that I think there’s none left.” After the spat, Wallace received so much blowback for his remarks that he issued an apology to Zelensky.

So looking back. Zelenskyy has been known having this stubborn temper since the Biden’s administration. Their response are basically same as Trump, lack of gratitude

The Ukrainians are loving this. But damn man. This is the worst combo to have, especially you have Trump as your allies

Trump would have found a way to “rationalize” rejecting Ukraine anyway. The idea that enough ass-kissing would definitely have been successful is insane. Trump had already given away all negotiation advantage, had already called Ukraine the problem, had already defended Putin and attacked Zelensky. Everyone is trying to be “fair” by criticizing Zelensky, but in this instance it is like saying, “To be fair, the girl scratched her rapist. As soon as she did that, she had to know she was going to be stabbed.”

You’ve been fucked since Nov 5 unfortunately.