As he meets Starmer, might Zelensky find new ways to mutter imprecations?
Photo by Jasmine Yu on Unsplash
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky may be in London once again soon to meet Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer but what on earth will they find to talk about?
What might the two men say that will be different from before?
Perhaps Mr Zelensky might find new ways to mutter imprecations? As a creative, perhaps he might come up with inventive images of the ‘peace’ plan being pushed by Donald Trump to better show it for what it is?
Perhaps Mr Starmer might address the whole farrago of Mr Trump’s envoys visiting Moscow as honoured guests and having a five-hour conversation (!) with President Putin?
Mr Zelensky will also meet other European leaders, as might be expected considering Europe is now shouldering most of the cost of Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion.
But the fruitlessness of talks between Ukraine’s president and European leaders is very apparent.
All of them are on the same page.Not so the United States.
The US is at the bargaining table with Russia. Not so Europe.
There is a major problem, which the Ukrainians and Europeans are not pointing out in clear terms.
Mr Trump’s most trusted men sit with Mr Putin at said table and all the effort seems to be focussed on bartering away Ukraine’s land and sovereignty and flicking away any notion of a just peace.
There is no reason to believe that Russia will buy into any plan that doesn’t involve Ukraine’s capitulation – or even that Russia seeks to end the war.
Mr Trump does. He wants to stop the guns firing. Not peace per se, just an end to bombs falling.
