P.E.I.'s Ukrainian community jarred by Trump-Zelenskyy encounter

Members of P.E.I.'s Ukrainian community say they were shocked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday. 

Raising their voices and speaking over one another at a meeting in the Oval Office, Trump and U.S. Vice-President JD Vance scolded Zelenskyy, accusing him of not being thankful for the support the U.S. has provided in the war.

"It's hard to see when your country of origin's leader … is engaged in a direct sort of altercation with a world leader of the country who is the most important ally of Ukraine today," said Dmytro Ponomarov, who moved to Canada from Ukraine in 2016. 

"It is really painful in a way that you can sort of imagine what the consequences of this might be." 

Ponomarov said he's never seen anything of this importance and scale before. 

Reaction to the meeting

The meeting included "sneaky questions," like one made about Zelenskyy's outfit, and "other unpleasant sort of pokes," Ponomarov said. 

Ponomarov said it was handled well, and it's important that Zelenskyy "stood his ground in terms of [pointing] out that there is no easy solution to this conflict." 

"Whether this is something that repels Americans, or that's something that they expected and wanted to happen, that's a completely different question," he said. 

The interaction represented something new in communication from leaders of countries, said Nikita Shupov of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress on P.E.I. 

When watching the interaction, Shupov said his "first emotion was something like when war started." 

He said he felt respect for his president and wanted to protect him. 

"Zelenskyy is our leader," said Shupov. "And maybe we have some different positions for some tiny, tiny things, but in general, it's our leader.

"[Ukrainians] stand with our president, and we support our president."

U.S. relationship 

Shupov said Ukrainians are repeatedly thanking allies despite Trump's claim that Zelenskyy is not thankful for U.S. support. 

"Thank you to American people, thank you to American administration, to all North America people," he said.

The thanks are repeated "again and again," Shupov said. 

The next steps are unpredictable and "all Ukrainians are a little bit worried about what will happen in the next period," Shupov said. 

For Ponomarov, it's not just the U.S. president who performs the role of an ally. 

"It's the whole country," he said. "It's the existing connections. It's the existing programs, which are still running."