Trump and Vance say they trust Putin to keep a cease-fire. Zelensky is for trust but verify.

The scene Friday afternoon in the Oval Office was disgraceful. There’s a reason that negotiations between allies with significant differences ought to happen behind closed doors instead of on camera for the whole world to see.

There will be much commentary about the Sturm und Drang, the shouting, the pointing, and the yelling. I think all that’s important.

But I want to focus for a moment on what specifically Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky were arguing about — what set off their televised dispute, what their key difference was.

President Trump’s repeatedly stated position is that his core aim is a cease-fire. He wants to end the killing and the dying.

Zelensky, who says that he also wants to end the war, argues that a cease-fire without security guarantees is simply not enough because Ukraine, the U.S., and Europe cannot trust that Vladimir Putin will stick to anything that’s agreed to.

The press conference went this way and that, swirling around to many different topics, but I’m going to summarize the key points of this Oval Office sit-down.

After an extended answer to a question that touched on things such as Ukraine’s rare earth deposits and President Trump’s sweep of the 2024 swing states, a reporter asks Trump about “long-term security for Ukraine.”

You can watch the exchange below, starting at the 2:34:03 mark.

The president responds that what’s important is the cease-fire. “Once we make the [cease-fire] agreement, that’s going to be 95 percent of it. They’re not going to go back to fighting.”

“I’ve spoken with President Putin — I’ve known him for a long time — and I feel very strongly that they’re very serious about it,” Trump continues.

Trump then gives an extended followup on how the war is costing many thousands of lives and is very expensive for all involved.

But then, after the conversation swerves around for a few minutes, encompassing subjects as various as whether the Ukrainian president owns a suit — critically, Zelensky tries to explain his bottom-line position that a cease-fire deal alone is not enough for Ukraine because, in his country’s experience during this war since 2014, Putin’s Russia has violated cease-fire deal after cease-fire deal repeatedly. Western guarantees of Ukraine’s security, Zelensky says, are the only way that Ukraine can have confidence that a new cease-fire will stick.

Starting at the 2:41:21 mark here, Zelensky says: “About security guarantees, and about a cease-fire: We cannot just speak about a cease fire — and speak and speak — it won’t work. Just a cease-fire won’t work. . . .  because in Ukraine even before my presidency, since 2014, Putin broke cease-fires 25 times.”

“But he never broke it with me,” Trump interjects.

“No, no — you were the president,” Zelensky says, referring to incidents in which Russia broke cease-fires in the period 2017–20, during which Trump was president, negotiated under the multilateral Normandy Format negotiations, which included Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany.

Trump responds that the full-scale February 2022 invasion didn’t happen under his watch, and Zelensky agrees.

Zelensky, apparently trying to placate Trump, then tries to suggest, if what Trump says is the case — if Putin won’t try anything under Trump — then why can’t the Ukrainians get security guarantees in advance of this cease-fire? Zelensky argues that Trump could in fact get them and that Putin would be cowed by Trump and American power. “President Trump has good will to stop this war,” and Putin knows it,  Zelensky says.

Trump’s rare earth minerals deal and the ongoing negotiations, Zelensky continues, “are a very good start, but they are not enough to stop” Putin from deciding to resume the conflict at a time of his own choosing.

After various swerves in the conversation — who will pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction?, will Trump visit Ukraine?, has Europe or the U.S. given more aid to Ukraine?, why doesn’t Trump directly criticize Putin? — the conversation comes back around to their core disagreement.

In response to a question about when Trump had last spoken to Putin, the president said, “I think he’d like to make a deal. . . . He wants to make a deal, and he’d like to see it end.”

JD Vance then interjects that Joe Biden failed in his strategy of “thumping our chest” and talking tough. Perhaps, Vance argues, the United States should try diplomacy to end the war.

But then, asking Trump’s permission to respond to Vance directly, the Ukrainian president asks the American vice president to explain why, after Putin invaded eastern Ukraine and the Crimea in 2014 — in a period that extended over the Obama years, the first Trump administration, and the Biden administration — “nobody stopped him.”

“From 2014 to 2022, people have been dying on the contact line. Nobody stopped him,” Zelensky continues.

During this period, Zelensky reiterates to Vance, many negotiations happened. Documents were signed. Cease-fires were agreed to. “In 2019 I signed with [Putin] a cease-fire,” Zelensky says, and French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised Ukraine that Russia’s aggression was finished. But, Zelensky says, Putin broke his word again and again.

“What kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about?” Zelensky asks Vance.

“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that will end the destruction of your country,” the thin-skinned Vance retorts.

At that, the vice president theatrically appeals to the president of the United States for cover and begins castigating Zelensky for disrespectfully “coming into the Oval Office and trying to litigate this in front of the American people,” and then the conversation devolves from there.

There’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam in this conversation, but Americans should focus on this key disagreement. They should focus on the fact that neither JD Vance nor Donald Trump have a coherent answer to Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimate question.

Donald Trump and JD Vance want a cease-fire, and they want one now.

Trump argues that Putin will keep his word, wants peace, and will abide by any agreement — on the “evidence” that Putin told Trump this information. Trump says he trusts that Putin wants peace, because Putin told him so.

Volodymyr Zelensky disagrees. He says that he and his country want peace, but that Putin cannot be trusted to keep his word, and that any cease-fire agreement ought to be enforced by Western security guarantees.

If one takes the emotion out of everything, if one steps back from the shouting in the Oval Office, that’s the question that is at issue. And I don’t see how any honest evaluation of the international situation and Putin’s tenure as master of the Kremlin since 2000 would lead any American to not see Zelensky’s point of view — and the deficiency of Trump and Vance’s “just give peace a chance” position.