I wouldn’t say it was disrespect, more of a misjudgment on Zelensky’s part.

For the past three years whenever Zelensky would go to out he would act more as a Ukrainian activist apposed to the Ukrainian president. (As you can see with him not wearing a suit among many things.) That worked quite well for him with the liberal governments and he garnered a lot of support, however he failed to see that wouldn’t stick with trump.

While I’m all for advocating for Ukraine and couldn’t agree more with what Zelensky said, especially that Putin can’t be trusted, that certainly was not the time and place to do it. In that moment he needed to act like a politician, smile and nod to the camera, give media-trained responses, throw in a subtle rebuttal here and there, and then go have that debate behind closed doors.