Last week’s on-camera confrontation between President Trump and Vice President JD Vance on the one hand, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the other, has shocked the world. One especially remarkable feature was Trump’s insistence by Trump, and even more that of Vance, that Zelensky had not thanked the U.S. sufficiently for American support for Ukraine after Russia invaded it.

Never mind that Zelensky has thanked the U.S. for its support on numerous occasions — CNN found that he had done so 33 times. Trump’s and Vance’s complaint was that Zelensky’s failure to do so while meeting them at the White House was especially “disrespectful” and perhaps a cause for the U.S. to cut back or even end its aid to Ukraine.

It was the Biden administration that got Congress to support Ukraine — with Republican support at first, but later in the face of Republican opposition. And Trump spoke disrespectfully about former President Joe Biden during the meeting with Zelensky — even though the meeting was held in the very office where Biden had worked and where people are supposed to speak “respectfully,” as Vance would have it.

Speaking of thankfulness, Trump has never thanked Biden for not obstructing him from taking office in January 2025, the way Trump tried to do to Biden in January 2021.

And there is no record of Trump practicing what he preaches by thanking French President Emmanuel Macron during their recent White House meeting for French military support to Americans fighting for independence from Britain during the Revolutionary War — support that was vital to the rebel cause, which might well not have succeeded without it.

As with French support for the American revolutionaries in the 18th century, American support for Ukraine in its war with Russia was not provided just out of charity or a desire to further a good cause. Nations who provide military assistance to others fighting wars do so when they calculate that it is in their interests.

The Biden administration — along with many European and other Western governments — provided military assistance to Ukraine because they feared that a Russian defeat of Ukraine could result in worse consequences for them.

One is that an emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin might think America and its allies unwilling to help Ukraine defend itself, and conclude that they won’t defend other countries in Europe, either that have far smaller populations than Ukraine. Yes, they may be NATO members which (unlike Ukraine) the U.S. along with other members of the alliance are committed to defend. But Putin might calculate that if the U.S. will let fall a large country like Ukraine that has fought Russia for years, he could swiftly overrun a much smaller country before NATO can react.

He may even calculate (correctly or not) that Trump would make another small sacrifice to avoid direct U.S. involvement in war.

Nor is Putin the only dictator who might think U.S. unwillingness to help Ukraine gives him a free hand. If the U.S. stops helping Ukraine, after all, why should it help Taiwan or any other country on China’s periphery?

Yes, Zelensky and Ukrainians in general should be thankful for the American and other Western assistance they are receiving. And they are. But Americans and other Westerners should be grateful that Ukrainians — and not they themselves — are the ones fighting Putin’s aggression. Unfortunately, while insisting that they be thanked for American assistance to Ukraine, Trump and Vance did not thank Zelensky or Ukrainians in general for undertaking the burden of fighting against the Russian aggression that threatens Europe and the West more broadly.

There needs to be a greater understanding among American critics of Zelensky that, apart from questions about who should thank who, or when and how often they should do so, the U.S. has supported Ukraine’s fight against Russia not out of charity but because it has been in America’s interests to do so.

Reducing or ending American assistance to Ukraine because Trump and Vance do not think Zelensky has sufficiently displayed gratitude would hurt American security interests along with Ukrainian and European ones.

Mark N. Katz is a professor emeritus at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. 

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