Trump, Vance attack on Zelenskyy angers many. But Russians and (some) Republicans love it.

Ukraine’s supporters in Washington and abroad reacted with horror to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s verbal takedown of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, calling it a dismaying display of American bullying.

Trump supporters cast the encounter differently, saying it was a necessary show of American power toward an ungrateful ally.

The Russians, of course, were thrilled with how it all went.

The one thing most everyone could agree on was that the Oval Office back-and-forth three years into the full-scale Russia-Ukraine war was jaw-dropping.

“Frankly, I still don’t know how to process what we just saw,” one foreign diplomat in Washington said an hour after the session ended. The person, along with several others, was granted anonymity because the issue was sensitive and some feared retaliation from the White House.

At the State Department, which is already reeling from the specter of Trump administration plans to shrink the U.S. diplomatic footprint, staff expressed shock that Trump would treat another country’s leader so dismissively.

“This guy isn’t just trying to save his country — he’s the finger in the dike for the rest of Europe,” one State Department official said of Zelenskyy. “First, we extort him, then we intentionally try to embarrass him.”

Ukraine Caucus Co-Chair Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), speaking on MSNBC, called the scene “the Trump-Vance clown show, and it’s horrifying,” Asked how allies would react, Quigley said, “I don’t know if we have allies anymore.”

Many leaders across Europe expressed solidarity and support for Ukraine, as well as a sense that they could no longer count on the United States. “Dear @ZelenskyyUa, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone,” Poland’s Donald Tusk posted on social media.

Zelenskky was in town in part to sign a mineral deal that both sides had said they planned to finalize Friday. The Trump and Vance strike on the Ukrainian leader came across as so abrupt and coordinated that some observers wondered afterward if the pair had pre-planned it.

“The American side seemed to be intent on provoking a fight,” said Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland. “To have that kind of a blow up in the Oval Office when you’re getting what you demanded, which is a signature on the minerals deal, cannot be easily explained or understood in terms of American interest.”

White House officials deny the criticism of Zelenskyy was at all pre-planned. “Going in, everyone was expecting the exact opposite of what happened in the Oval,” one aide said.

The deal was aimed at the future sharing of Ukraine’s mineral wealth with the United States, and Zelenskyy had hoped to obtain security guarantees for his country from Trump as part of the talks. But a sit down in front of the press in the Oval Office quickly veered off course when Vance intervened to make the case for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

A visibly irate Zelenskyy responded by listing a series of failed diplomatic efforts intended to stop the war in eastern Ukraine, which had simmered since 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. From there it descended into an argument with Trump and Zelenskyy talking over each other. “You’re gambling with World War III,” said Trump, while Vance challenged Zelenskyy to be more grateful for U.S. support. “Have you said ‘thank you’ once?”

Afterward, Trump asked Zelenskyy to leave the premises, according to two White House officials. The White House confirmed no mineral deal was signed. A dual press conference scheduled with Zelenskyy and Trump was canceled. Trump wrote on social media afterward that “President Zelenskyy is not ready for peace” and was, essentially, trying to take advantage of having the U.S. on his side.

“That was a display of a president and vice president standing up for America,” a White House aide said in the aftermath of the meeting.

Pentagon officials did not respond to a question if today’s events at the White House would have any impact on the continued flow of weapons and equipment to Ukraine pledged under the Biden administration.

As of Friday, weapons shipments to Ukraine were still scheduled to continue, although talks at the White House were happening Friday evening about next steps, according to one administration official.

Spokespersons for the State Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Those briefed on discussions ahead of the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting had been confident that a minerals deal was settled. Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said that when she spoke to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) just ahead of the Oval Office meeting, he was “quite optimistic” they were going to sign the critical minerals deal.

Graham told reporters at the White House after the meeting that it was “a complete, utter disaster” and that he had warned Zelenskyy to not “take the bait” by getting into an argument with Trump.

“I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelenskyy again … The way he handled the meeting, the way he confronted the president was just over the top,” Graham said. “He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with or he needs to change.”

Trump supporters in Congress celebrated what they said was an assertion of an unapologetic “America First” worldview and negotiating style. Some saw it as justification for turning off the spigot of American aid to Kyiv.

“Not another penny,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), wrote atop a video of the exchange.

The fracas appeared to delight Moscow.

Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who often acts as a Kremlin attack dog, wrote on social media of Zelenskyy: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.” Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson said on a live streamed broadcast: “Zelenskyy is biting the hand that fed him.”

Michael Carpenter, who served as senior director for Europe on the National Security Council during the Biden administration, said the Kremlin was the main beneficiary of the quarrel.

“Certainly Zelenskyy could have expressed more gratitude for U.S. support and more openness to pursuing a diplomatic resolution of the war, but Trump and Vance’s harsh attacks have now greatly weakened his negotiating position vis-a-vis Russia,” Carpenter said. “Ukraine is desperately fighting for its survival, and now it’s just received a body blow from its biggest military supporter.”

For many Ukrainians, the moment was heart-wrenching, but some also saw it as clarifying.

“Trump demanded Ukraine’s surrender. This is what ‘you have no cards in your hand’ meant — it meant you lost, surrender,” the Ukrainian military analyst Mykhailo Samus, said in a Facebook post. “Was it possible to agree? I think there was no point. Because the U.S. was not going to help further.”

Zelenskyy himself took to social media to do what Vance — incorrectly — suggested he never did: Thank the United States for its help so far to his country.

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

He also retweeted the expressions of support from other leaders.

Jake Traylor, Dasha Burns, Veronika Melkozerova, Phelim Kine, Daniel Lippman, Eli Stokols, Seb Starcevic, Nicholas Wu, Joe Gould, Sue Allan, Jordain Carney and Paul McLeary contributed to this report.