What particularly pisses me off is how some people are going "well Zelenskyy should not have pressed the issue of security guarantees, and just accepted the implicit promise".

First of all, an 'implicit promise' is worth fuck all when you are dealing with someone who has no sense of obligation towards promises in the first place, like Trump. If it's not on paper or video, it doesn't exist.

But perhaps more important is the underlying subtext of this criticism. Because that subtext is "well you know Trump is volatile and unreliable, so you shouldn't do anything to provoke him, and instead navigate around it".

That's a very familiar pattern. You know what it's called? "Enabling an abuser" and "victim blaming".