Unless you spent today under a rock, you will have seen or heard the epic shouting match which took place in the Oval Office between Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskij. Trump and Vance were trying to pressurise Zelenskij into agreeing to a hypothetical truce/peace settlement negotiated between Trump and Putin, signing a “deal” that would give the USA exclusive access to various natural resources in Ukraine as a condition for future support, and accusing him of not being successfully thankful for what Trump did to support Ukraine.

There are a few observations which can be made about the whole affair:

• Ukraine is not the aggressor here. The new narrative from Washington D.C. (incidentally the old narrative from Moscow) is that this is somehow all Ukraine's fault, but in reality the person who needs to agree to a truce or peace settlement is Putin. As they say, “If Russia stops fighting, there is no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there is no Ukraine.” This is something that Trump and Vance are trying to gloss over; Trump's problem here is that he promised to “stop the war” in 24 hours, but as it turns out Putin appears to have no intention of stopping before he's done. Trump wants the war to stop but isn't in a great position to put pressure on Putin, so it is a lot easier to bully Zelenskij instead. (Actually, I like to think that the reason why Trump is so eager to stop the war in Ukraine is that he secretly hopes this will get him a Nobel Peace Prize. Remember that Trump's nemesis, Barack Obama, received one in 2009, and that this is one – perhaps the one – achievement of Obama's which Trump can't undo and which is not within easy reach of himself, either. One can argue whether Obama deserved the prize when he got it, but that's a different discussion and Trump doesn't care – he only sees it as something that Obama has and he hasn't.)

• As usual, Trump is slinging around lies about the amount of aid the US has provided to Ukraine – not $500 billion but in fact less than $200 billion. It is also worth remembering that even the lower number does not mean that $200 billion's worth of actual greenbacks have ended up in Ukraine. Most of the US military aid has been in the shape of surplus materiel (like missiles and tanks) that would otherwise have to have been disposed of at considerable expense to the American taxpayer. Even much of the monetary aid didn't actually go to Ukraine but instead went to US defence contractors to buy more modern military equipment for Ukraine, and therefore should be properly thought of as a domestic stimulus package for the US defence industry. Finally, Trump has only been in office for six weeks and certainly hasn't done anything in particular for Ukraine (in fact, his party worked hard to block aid to Ukraine for months during the previous administration), so why should Zelenskij be especially grateful to him personally? Most of the help he got was from Trump's predecessor, Biden.

• It is not the height of hospitality to pick on Zelenskij's attire. The guy is deliberately wearing military-style outfits as a sign of solidarity with his troops and to emphasise the fact that his country is at war. If Vance thinks that it is disrespectful not to wear a suit in the Oval Office, he should tell that to Elon Musk.

• The whole thing seemed like it was pre-arranged to provoke Zelenskij, and it must be said that under the circumstances he was keeping remarkably cool. It is the height of arrogance on the part of Vance to tell Zelenskij to his face that he doesn't need to hear about Ukraine from him, he can get all his information from TV. It is also reasonable for Zelenskij to point out that the problem with “diplomacy” with Putin is that Putin cannot be trusted. But telling him that he had better agree to Trump's and Vance's demands “or else” is what Mafia bosses do.

• It could be said that how this panned out was basically a failure on the part of Zelenskij's team to adequately prepare him for this meeting – Torsten Heinrich argues that he ought to have known that this was not supposed to be a meeting among equals but that he was coming as a humble petitioner to an imperial court, so he should have been prepared, for the good of his own country, to grovel and plead for help from His Majesty Donald I. of America. The problem there, I think, is that Trump is already on Team Putin and that probably no amount of groveling would have been enough to change the outcome of the meeting. Even with the groveling, Zelenskij would only have gone home with a terrible resources “deal” and no robust US-backed security guarantees for a “peace”. According to Trump, having American workers in the country prospecting for lithium or titanium will be enough to deter Putin from trying to take over the rest of Ukraine – but in reality, Putin would just give the Americans 48 hours' notice to get out of the country and then invade anyway. So in the interest of his own country, Zelenskij can just as well go down with flying colours and his dignity (and that of Ukraine) intact.

The whole situation sucks and we will have to see what the EU (and UK) will do to support Ukraine if the USA can no longer be counted upon. It is reasonable to say that Trump has trampled on 80 years of post-war world order and that it is impossible to say what long-term repercussions this will have.