On February 28, 2025, Trump and Vice President Vance publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, demanding gratitude and threatening to abandon Ukraine in its fight against Russia unless Zelenskyy accepted Trump's peace terms.
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I am a twelve-year-old Ukrainian girl watching the Oval Office meeting on my father's phone.
We sit together in the basement shelter of our apartment building in Kharkiv. The electricity is working tonight, which feels like a small miracle. Father says we should use it to see how President Zelenskyy's American visit is going. Maybe there will be good news, he whispers. Maybe help is coming.
The air raid sirens fell silent an hour ago, but no one goes upstairs yet. We've learned that lesson. The Russians sometimes wait, hoping people will emerge, before sending the second wave of missiles. So we stay here among the mattresses and water bottles, the hanging sheets that give each family a pretend room, the children's drawings taped to concrete walls to make this underground life feel less like hiding and more like living.
"Look," Father says, showing me his screen. "There's our president."
President Zelenskyy looks so small sitting in that big white room. His eyes have the same tired shadows that Father's do. He wears a simple black sweater, not a suit like the Americans. It reminds me of how he dresses when he visits our soldiers at the front.
We watch quietly as he tries to speak. The American president keeps interrupting him. The vice president sneers at him. They speak to our president like my teacher speaks to Maksym when he forgets his homework—but worse, with something cold in their eyes that makes my stomach hurt.
"Why are they being so mean?" I whisper.
Father puts his finger to his lips. Other families have gathered around us now, everyone leaning in to see the phone. Mrs. Kozlov, who lost her son in Bakhmut last year, covers her mouth with her hand. Mr. Petrov, who walks with a cane since the missile hit his apartment, shakes his head slowly.
"You're not winning this," the American president tells our president.
Father's hand tightens around the phone. I feel the muscles in his arm go tense against mine.
"But we are still here," I want to say to the screen. "We are still fighting."
Last week, my best friend Sophia's father came home from the front missing his left arm. She told me he cried at night, but in the morning, he said he would go back as soon as he could hold a rifle again. At school—when we can go—Daniil's desk sits empty since his family's evacuation bus was hit. Our teacher still calls his name during attendance, and we all answer "Present" for him. Is this what "not winning" means?
"You gotta be more thankful," the American vice president demands on the screen.
Mrs. Kozlov makes a small sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob. Her son is buried in a field near Bakhmut with a wooden cross that will probably not last through spring.
"We are thankful," she whispers to the phone. "We are thankful for every bullet that lets our boys fight back. We are thankful for every vest that gives them one more chance." Her voice breaks. "But must we beg? Must our president beg?"
Father's eyes grow wet as the American president tells ours, "If we're out, you'll fight it out. I don't think it's going to be pretty."
I think about what that means. More nights in this basement. More air raid sirens. More friends disappearing. More fathers and brothers not coming home. More cities turning into the rubble I see on the news from Mariupol and Bakhmut.
The phone screen goes dark as Father's hand drops to his side. No one speaks. The only sound is Mrs. Kozlov's quiet crying and the distant boom of something exploding on the other side of the city.
Later, when we finally go back upstairs to our apartment, I hear Father in the kitchen with Mother. They speak in whispers, but I can still hear them.
"What will we do now?" Mother asks.
"The same as we've always done," Father answers. "We fight. We survive. We don't give up."
"But without America..."
"We've known this might happen. We've always known."
I go to my window and look out at the darkened city. Somewhere out there, beyond the buildings and the checkpoints and the trenches, are the Russians. They are waiting. They are watching. They have time.
I am twelve years old, and tonight I learned something.
I learned that oceans away, in a white house in a safe country, powerful men can laugh while deciding if children like me will sleep in basements for another year.
Or become refugees.
Or disappear entirely.
I learned that to some, our gratitude matters more than our lives. That our president can be humiliated for trying to save us. That help comes with the demand that we beg properly for it.
But I also learned, watching Father's face in the darkness of our shelter, that we will not surrender, even if we are abandoned. That some things are worth fighting for, even alone. That dignity matters, even when you're losing.
That being Ukrainian means something
no American president can take away.
