Zelenskyy Issues Statement After Being Kicked Out of White House – Did Trump’s Message Finally Get Through to Him?

A man walking a tightrope doesn’t get very many chances to slip.

After three years at the head of a country battling extermination from a Russian invasion while trying to keep Western countries on his side, Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskyy has to know that balancing act all too well.

And on Friday, in a disastrous, televised clash with President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, Zelenskyy slipped badly — now’s he trying to find his footing again.

In a message posted to the social media platform X in the aftermath of the Oval Office confrontation — and being essentially booted from the White House — Zelenskyy offered nothing but gratitude, with not one word about a dispute the whole world saw.

Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people.
Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 28, 2025

“Thank you America, thank you for your support, thank you for this visit. Thank you @POTUS, Congress, and the American people,” Zelenskyy wrote in Ukrainian, according to a Google translation of the post.

“Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that. “The words were an obvious response to one of the themes of Friday’s fractured meeting — when Vance at one point, according to Fox News, asked Zelenskyy if he’d “said ‘thank you’ once this entire meeting.”

(There’s no way of knowing if Zelenskyy himself wrote the post. Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova might well have been behind it, after witnessing Friday’s meltdown first hand.)

So in one sense, Zelenskyy had clearly gotten the message: Trump and Vance had no patience with the president of a country that depends on U.S. assistance for its very existence acting like he was giving a lesson to U.S. leaders on the dangers Russia poses to the world.

In an interview Friday night with Fox News’ Brett Baier, Zelenskyy stressed his gratitude again when asked if he thinks his relationship with Trump can be salvaged.

“Yes, of course, because it’s relations more than two presidents. It’s the historical relations, strong relations between our people, and that’s why I always began… to thank your people from our people,” Zelenskyy told Baier, according to Fox.

“Of course, thankful to the president, and, of course, to Congress, but first of all, to your people. Your people helped save our people… we wanted very much to have all these strong relations, and where it counted, we will have it.”

However, according to Fox, Zelenskyy also said he “was not sure we did anything bad” in the White House blow-up.

“I just want to be honest, and I just want our partners to understand the situation correctly, and I want to understand everything correctly. That’s about us not to lose our friendship,” he later said.

The question, of course, is where it goes from here.

According to The Associated Press, European leaders took to social media Friday to support Zelenskyy, though “largely without mentioning Trump or Vance.”

But without American might to back it up, all the affection in the world from Europe won’t change the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

Countries that can’t pony up enough to pay for their own defense aren’t going to sacrifice their precious social programs just to save their neighbor in the east — Zelenskyy knows it, Russian President Vladimir Putin knows it, and Donald Trump knows it.

Ukraine is far from the first foreign country to rely on American help just to stay in existence. The most obvious example can be seen through Israeli leaders, who have been walking a similar tightrope since the day their country was born in 1948, and was immediately attacked by the armies of five Arab nations bent on its destruction.

But Zelenskyy is the one who slipped, and slipped badly, by getting into a confrontation with his country’s single best hope in a scene that was an embarrassment to all sides.

And a man walking a tightrope doesn’t get many chances.

Story Editor

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