The contrast in tone and, at least on the face of it, substance could not be greater. At their notorious meeting in the Oval Office in February, Donald Trump launched an unprecedented public assault, amounting to ritual humiliation, on Volodymyr Zelensky. President Trump angrily told his counterpart that he couldn’t win the war against Russia, saying: “You don’t have the cards right now,” and: “Your country is in big trouble... you’re not winning this.”
But in their latest bilateral, on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, things were unmistakably – indeed, unbelievably – calmer and friendlier. As the pair answered questions from the media, the US president was noticeably more assertive on the matter of Nato taking lethal action against Russian aggression, giving a simple “yes” to a query about drones or aircraft being shot down over Poland or elsewhere.
