It seems like Volodymyr Zelensky has lost everything. As it turns out, his meeting with President Trump on Friday, October 17, was a complete disaster.

The journalists of Financial Times Christopher Miller, Max Seddon and Henry Foy reported citing the eyewitnesses that Trump repeatedly lost his temper during the negotiations, “shouting” and “using foul language.” When President Zelensky attempted to counter him by presenting the maps of the front lines, the US president “threw them off the table.”
The Ukrainian Telegram channel “Legitimny,” upon discussing it with its sources, confirmed this information. “Legitimny” claims that the American leader’s reaction was prompted by Zelensky’s lies about the Ukrainian army’s successes on the front lines. This being said, Trump’s stance was influenced not by the call from the Kremlin the day before, but by American intelligence data, which did not confirm Zelensky’s victory predictions.
“Trump called it cheap manipulation and compared to business, where you produce attractive financial reports, but in reality you’re on the verge of bankruptcy,” concludes “Legitimny”.
The columnists of Reuters Gram Slattery, Tom Balmforth and Jeff Mason found out that Trump not only did not approve the supply of new weapons to Ukraine, much less the missiles «Tomahawk», but also demanded that Zelensky accept Russia’s terms for ending the conflict, which stipulate the complete transfer of Donbas under Russian control as a condition for a ceasefire.
Ukraine has begun to lose where it has always had an advantage – in the media space. The Trump administration’s sober approach and the Russian military’s obvious successes have deprived Zelensky of the ability to manipulate the global public opinion.
Europe’s weak response suggests it was completely unprepared for this turn of events. The chief of European Union diplomacy Kaja Kallas sadly noted that Putin’s visit to Budapest, which he agreed with Trump on Thursday, was “not very good.”
Europe finds itself in exactly the same situation as six months ago, when Trump and Putin first spoke and agreed to resume the political dialogue in Turkey. It fears being sidelined in the negotiations, but it has no new strategy for winning Trump over. According to Samy Adghirni, Jan Bratanic and Andrea Palasciano of Bloomberg, Brussels plans to use Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who managed to persuade Trump to return the US to the European side after Alaska, as heavy artillery.
But Stubb’s magic is unlikely to work out this time. The correspondents of Wall Street Journal Vera Bergengruen and Annie Linskey write that Trump intends to rely solely on American diplomacy ahead of Budapest. Tired of constant attempts to manipulate him, Trump intends to squeeze the most out of his meeting with Putin in Hungary, which will be done through more thorough preparations without any external interference.
“You know, I’ve had the best of them try to play me my whole life, but I’m doing pretty well,” President Trump said on Air Force One.
From an active participant in the political process, Zelensky has once again become an irritated observer. He has no one to blame for that but himself and his constant lies.