Today was strictly for "show". It was completely premeditated by Vance and Trump to appeal to their base. It was back to Trump's days of doing "the Apprentice". But people need to learn to cut through the BS talking points and follow the actions.
1. What Trump is trying to do is get this mineral deal done so he can continue sending military aid to Ukraine quietly, while loudly promoting to his followers that he's made the Ukrainians capitulate to a mineral deal that would recoup the money America has spent on the war. In reality, anyone that has read the leaked text of that deal knows that it was completely hollow and not what Trump and Vance are promoting it to the U.S. people as. What the deal really is, is a way for U.S. direct investment to spread into Ukraine, so that behind the scenes Trump could threaten Putin, and say "those are our interests now, so if you fuck around, I'll give the Ukrainians everything they need to repel you and more"... But on the surface, Trump would let Putin save face by getting a percentage of Ukraine in a peace deal, in exchange for the war coming to an end.
2. What Zelensky did wasn't disrespectful in any context. Again, it was all just "for show" on Trump and Vance's side. But what Zelensky did frustrated the American leadership because he's prodding them to make public comments condemning Putin and wanting them to openly aide with Ukraine, while simultaneously trying to get the Russians to negotiate. Trump and Vance wanted that meeting in front of the public to be all about the mineral deal and convince the base that America was getting some huge win. They were annoyed that Zelensky brought it back to questions about trusting Putin and negotiations, because anything negative they said about Putin would further setup American-Russian negotiations. Trump and Vance were frustrated that Zelensky wanted to talk about the war in public fashion and Zelensky wanted to take the opportunity to hold the feet of the Americans to fire publicly by getting the. To talk about something they were trying to avoid in the public realm.
This was pure geopolitics mixed with entertainment. Trump doesn't hate Zelensky and he fully understands how valuable Ukraine is in draining the Russian resource pool and weakening Russia's hand globally, while destroying their irreplaceable Soviet stockpile. But Trump wants Zelensky to accept the role of playing "weak" on the surface, while continuing to receive support quietly, on the backend. Zelensky, on the other hand, wants support from the Americans to be public and for them to strongly and openly back the Ukrainian war effort, because he thinks that serves as the best deterrent to Putin and creates the best morale for the Ukrainian people. Both sides know that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is still quite a ways off, but both want to arrive at it differently.
Meanwhile, Europe wants Ukraine to keep fighting and they're willing to step up with new support packages to keep Ukraine in the fight. But what Europe is after is an increasingly destroyed Russian Army. Make no mistake about it, Ukraine is losing a lot of soldiers and weapons of war too, but Russian advancement costs the Russian military unfathomable amounts of equipment and manpower. We saw them take 6 months and the destruction of Wagner to take tiny, Bahkmut. They've now been stuck for another 7 months attempting to take another defensive position in Pokrovsk. Russia has no reasonable chance of taking Kharkiv or Kramatorsk-Slovyansk within the next year, therefore, Ukraine's eastern strongholds are relatively safe. But if Russia takes 5% more of Ukraine over the next year, at the cost of significant depletion of their armor, artillery shells, etc.... Europe sees that as a win. Kyiv will not fall and what remains of Ukraine post war will eventually join the EU, but right now the Ukrainian willingness to fight for every cm of land is a win for Europe.
In short, nothing has really changed other than Europe realizing that they'll have to step up significantly financially and Trump confirming that they will not be an open ally of the Ukrainians and would rather do things behind the scenes instead, while forcing Europe to foot a great portion of the bill.
