His point that Russia has not abided by previous agreements is well-taken. Clearly any future cease fire will need better enforcement provisions. But this is putting the cart before the horse: the deal that should have been signed today was not a cease fire, it was a mineral rights agreement. If and when a cease fire is on the table that Zelensky feels will be unenforceable, then he can criticize its provisions.
I, for one, don’t want to keep dumping money on him throwing his citizens into the meat grinder.
All that being said though it doesn't change anything about how the meeting went down. I've been lucky enough where I've literally never worked at a place where that would've been acceptable behavior, I've seen people talked to for less. To do that then double down more later was pretty embarrassing. Zelensky pushing back on their view on diplomacy in Ukraine didn't seem like a particular insult to me to make the meltdown make sense.
as sorta an aside: I was especially confused about them getting mad at Zelensky for telling them how to feel but as a native English speaker saying "you're going to feel it" means more you're going to feel the effects not you're going to feel a specific emotion (like after a hard workout at the gym if someone told me "you're going to feel it tomorrow" it would then be really weird for me to interpret that as them telling me how to feel emotionally). Trump responding he was going to feel strong was surreal and confusing to me. Especially with Zelensky as a non-native speaker it was weird to see Trump be the one struggling more with language. I can sorta understand agreeing with Trump politically but I just don't see how that was an acceptable or even normal way to react.
Anyway, that's a long post. I've watched the whole video and watching it just makes me feel like I've been taking crazy pills so I've thought about it a lot today.
Edit: and I forgot the whole thanking thing. Zelensky famously has thanked the US for aid and it seems like something they should know (even I was aware of it and confused while watching the video). But then Vance just pivoted to being mad about something else. Like people are talking about this like it's a policy dispute but I feel like I just watched some someone's villain arc on "The Bachelor", they seemed like reality TV characters.
Sure. They can do what they want and so can we. We don’t owe them anything. And honestly, in a way we’re just enablers at this point. We’re enabling them to fight on and enabling them to pointless throw away more lives.
Neither does he, Ukraine just wants real security guarantees.
If he was asked a question on American politics I would tend to agree but this is Americans here espousing their views on Ukrainian politics and then expecting to not hear the Ukrainian side to it.