Macron and Starmer had had visits to the White House that had been described as triumphs, simply because they avoided humiliation. In other words, they avoided exactly what then happened with President Zelensky at the end of the week. But he had a much harder job than they did - they had been able to fail on Ukraine gracefully, but he did not have that option. Most of the commentary on this is ignoring the context, and focusing instead on who was to blame. We can do better - let's discuss.