Zelenskyy’s last-minute choice of ‘fallacious reward’ instead of world championship belt led to Oval Office spat

Zelenskyy confirmed Trump ugly pictures of Ukrainian prisoners of battle instead of handing him the reward that he introduced.

In an interview with Time Magazine, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that he had introduced the heavyweight boxing championship belt received by Oleksandr Usyk to the White House and deliberate to reward it to President Donald Trump as a present of goodwill. But because the assembly started, he didn’t seize the belt positioned beside him and instead picked a folder containing graphic pictures of Ukrainian prisoners of battle.
“That’s tough stuff,” Trump informed him as he regarded over the photographs at some extent when the assembly didn’t flip right into a shouting match.
“Those pictures, according to some US officials, marked the point when the meeting went wrong. Had Zelensky offered the championship belt, the gesture might have lightened the mood. The photos had the opposite effect. They seemed to get Trump’s guard up, as though he were being blamed for the suffering of those soldiers,” the Time Magazine report mentioned.
But Zelenskyy doesn’t remorse his choice of reaching the fallacious reward, the report mentioned. “He has family, loved ones, children. He has to feel the things that every person feels. What I wanted to show were my values. But then, well, the conversation went in another direction,” Zelenskyy mentioned within the interview.
After Zelenskyy confirmed him the photographs, the shouting started as Vice President JD Vance accused him of not being grateful. Zelenskyy left the White House with out Usyk’s belt, and he isn’t positive what occurred to what was the precise reward for Trump.
“Maybe it’s still sitting there,” Zelenskyy mentioned.
A White House workers reportedly confirmed to Time that the belt was ultimately picked up and was put in Trump’s personal eating room with different items.
“But in that moment there was the sense of not being allies, or not taking the position of an ally,” Zelensky mentioned. “In that conversation, I was defending the dignity of Ukraine.”