Trump’s all theater, Europe’s a broken record, Zelensky wore a coat, and the war goes on Meduza summarizes how Russian Z-bloggers reacted to Monday’s Washington summit

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House to discuss a path to ending the Russia–Ukraine war. The two were also joined by a European delegation that included French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Frederich Merz, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. On the social network Telegram, where a community of “Z-bloggers” has cheered Russia’s invasion and meticulously reported on the war, many writers closely followed the Washington summit. 

What follows is a retelling of noteworthy reactions from Z-bloggers, reformulated and condensed into two short paragraphs. Meduza drew from popular channels including @dva_majors, @voin_dv, @epoddubny, @SergeyKolyasnikov, @boris_rozhin, @brussinf, and others.

Nothing new was announced or heard. The biggest breakthrough of the negotiations was forcing Zelensky to wear a suit jacket. Trump’s objective was to pressure Zelensky and Europe — and he partially succeeded: they abandoned demands for an immediate ceasefire and NATO membership in exchange for guarantees. The Europeans proved their irrelevance: while Trump and Putin pursue unprecedented rapprochement for peace, the E.U. showed up playing the same broken record. In Macron’s twisted understanding, constantly shipping weapons to Ukraine constitutes “years-long work toward achieving peace.” Trump distances himself from Brussels’s madness, while the E.U. ramps up military production. It’s clear where this is all heading, and it’s certainly not toward a lasting peace. We’re on the brink of a major war with Europe.

America’s role isn’t fully clear — there’s more political theater there than practical policy. A trilateral meeting is unlikely to change anything. Everyone’s already said their piece, and they’re nowhere close to agreeing. But you have to meet because we’re keeping the door open for talks, and if they’re not listening to us, that’s not our problem. Putin’s personal security is a real concern: the British might go ahead and smear Zelensky and his documents with some poisonous shit. There are no guarantees that personal negotiations will shift the parties’ positions — neither side currently faces near-defeat, so there’s no incentive for radical concessions. Zelensky and Putin keep feeding Trump their peace ideas, and he takes it all at face value. Bottom line, all the noise aside, there’s no deal ready to go, so the fighting goes on.