When I got Tim Mack on the line yesterday, he was getting ready to have something of a slumber party.

Tim's a reporter in Ukraine. He founded a news organization called the Counteroffensive.

He and his newsroom colleagues were staying up late because the biggest news in Ukraine

was about to happen thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C.

There was a meeting between President Trump and Volodomir Zelensky.

I often think that Americans don't pay as close attention to American politics as Ukrainians do,

and for good reason, right? Because like the Ukrainians are really very anxious about what's happening next.

This anxiety is hard-earned, to be clear. The last White House meeting between Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump

ended with the president and vice president taking turns berating the Ukrainian leader. And this meeting

came on the heels of a summit between President Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin, a summit in which

Trump appeared ready to support slicing off regions of Ukraine,

to be absorbed by Russia, full stop.

This is not great news, Tim says.

But in Ukraine, it isn't unexpected either.

I remember talking to a whole bunch of people who were, let's say, pretty politically connected,

and asking them,

are you guys going to be staying up late at night watching this feed and kind of anticipating what's happening with Putin and Trump? And the response I got is, I'm going to sleep very

soundly tonight because I have no expectations of anything good occurring. It's two great powers in the world essentially meeting to carve up a smaller power.

I mean, it was and is to the Ukrainians outrageous that this conversation even occurred.

Fast forward to this week, Bolitomir Zelensky boarded a plane to try to fix all this as much as he could.

And this time, he brought a few friends to crash the Oval Office Party, the prime ministers of Italy and Britain, NATO's Secretary General, the President of France, the Chancellor of Germany.

In a normal presidency, all of this would be scripted, you know, negotiations would have done months in advance, and they would know, we might not know, but they would know, the principles would know, what is going to happen. In this case, we have no idea.

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