Photo Captures Reaction of ‘The Only Ukrainian in the Room Who Understands How Much Damage Zelenskyy Just Did’

When it comes to Friday’s White House flare-up between the leaders of the United States and the president of Ukraine, one picture is worth a thousand heated words.

While reporters and microphones craned to catch every syllable of the real-time clash between President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, one very interested participant put her head in her hand.

Ukraine Ambassador Oksana Markarova appeared to know — better than the Ukrainian president himself — just how badly this had gone.

Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of the conservative website The Federalist, published the moment in a post on the social media platform X.

The Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. appears to be the only Ukrainian in the room who understands how much damage Zelensky just did to his own cause. pic.twitter.com/nx8JDPg6ny

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 28, 2025

“The Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. appears to be the only Ukrainian in the room who understands how much damage Zelensky just did to his own cause,” Davis wrote.

And there’s no question that the damage was done. After the confrontation — a public debacle played out for the entire world to see — Zelenskyy was promptly invited to depart the White House and a pending deal between Washington and Kyiv involving Ukraine minerals was put on hold.

Zelenskyy is president of a country fighting for its life in the face of a barbaric Russian invasion now more than three years old.

But Markarova is the diplomat tasked with maintaining Ukraine’s relationship with the United States — the country that’s provided the military support for Ukraine that’s enabled it to keep fighting.

Whatever she hoped was going to come from this meeting, a public dressing down of her country’s president and bitter feelings on all sides surely wasn’t it.

And it showed:

Ukraine’s ambassador to the US Oksana Markarova’s reaction to the clash between Trump and Zelensky. pic.twitter.com/jva0QWJnHB

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) February 28, 2025

One of the points that helped fuel the acrimony came when Vance pointed out Zelenskyy’s behavior in the run-up to the November election.

As a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette made clear, Zelenskyy’s visit to the swing state of Pennsylvania weeks before the Nov. 5 vote — in an obvious campaign effort for then-Vice President Kamala Harris against Trump.

The meddling in American politics by a foreign leader desperate to curry favor with the then-incumbent administration infuriated Republicans at the time and is still clearly a sore spot with the Trump White House.

“You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October,” Vance said, the Post-Gazette reported. (The visit was actually in September.)

“How about some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country?”

As soon as she heard the word “Pennsylvania,” Markarova had to know this wasn’t going to end well for her side — and maybe for herself, personally.

In the wake of Zelenskyy’s visit to then-President Joe Biden’s Pennsylvania hometown of Scranton, House Speaker Mike Johnson demanded Markarova be replaced as Ukraine’s ambassador for “organizing a partisan campaign event in a battleground state.”

Markarova had “demonstrated that she cannot be trusted to fairly and effectively serve as a diplomat in this country,” Johson wrote in a post on X.

If Harris had won in November, Zelenskyy’s visit would have looked simply obsequious and unmanly, effectively prostituting his own country’s invasion to help Democrats appeal to Pennsylvania voters — many of whom have Eastern European roots.

(It was especially appalling because it was the incoherent weakness of the Biden-Harris administration that essentially invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine in the first place.)

But Trump won — and won soundly — and Zelenskky’s visit not only looks obsequious and unmanly, it looks profoundly foolish, too.

So the ambassador has to be painfully aware of how shaky her country’s standing with the Trump administration actually is.

She has to know that her country — very much including Zelenskyy himself — s a considerable amount of responsibility for how frayed relations are right now.

(The Democrats who’ve used Ukraine and its very real peril as a prop to attack Trump, going back to before his first impeachment, are steeped in guilt here, too.)

And Markarova clearly knows how much damage Friday’s blow-up did to those relations in the future.

For all the harsh words in the Oval Office, the picture of Markarova with her head in her hands said it all.

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