International Personality of the Year: Vladimir Zelensky

The difference is eight months. On December 21, 2022, Vladimir Zelensky was received in the United States as if he were some kind of reincarnation of Winston Churchill: the White House sent a US Air Force plane to take him to Poland, accompanied by a NATO spy plane and two F-15 aircraft to take him to Washington . The US Congress held a joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate to hear his speech, which was repeatedly interrupted with enthusiasm by those present.

Just eight months later, on September 21, 2023, everything changed. If it is true that President Biden received him boisterously, Congress did not allow him to speak and did not hold a single session to receive him. The speech took place in the much more modest premises of the National Archives. And while he had both the Democratic Senate Majority Leader and the Republican Minority Leader on his side, several Republican senators were hostile to his presence, while then-Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was reluctant to take a photo with him.

His advisers tried to schedule interviews with Fox News and Oprah Winfrey, but no one agreed. Meanwhile, U.S. military aid to Ukraine was suspended in October at the request of Republican senators and representatives as a condition of a deal with Democrats on the 2024 federal budget and risks running out in December.

At the same time, according to polls, the majority of American public opinion (55%) is against continuing to send aid to Ukraine.
Breath of the Russian Bear

If the situation is particularly alarming in the US, given the enormous weight of its military assistance, the truth is that this is not an isolated incident. European countries and the European Union (EU), perhaps because they feel the breath of the Russian bear closer, generally continue to maintain unconditional support for Ukraine, but some cracks are starting to appear. In October, Slovakia elected as prime minister Robert Fico, a former communist turned socialist who supports Vladimir Putin’s Russia and who has already refused to continue sending military aid to Ukraine. The eternal Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, also met Putin in Beijing in October and is now threatening to block the next planned EU military aid, which is due to be decided this month. In November, the Netherlands handed an election victory to Geert Wilders, a populist who wants to end Ukraine’s support for Ukraine. As if this were not enough, a new large-scale war broke out in another part of the world, in the Gaza Strip, pitting Israel against Hamas and mobilizing the attention of international public opinion, as well as the financial and diplomatic resources of Western countries. The question begins to arise as to whether the United States is capable of putting out all the fires critical to the West.

Endless fight
Meanwhile, some Ukrainian military officials, several military experts and former supporters of Ukraine’s military efforts are frustrated by the situation at the front, from which they see no other way out except through negotiations that will end the fighting. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valeriy Zaluzhny, in an interview with The Economist magazine, said that the war has reached a dead end, which will not be possible without innovations and new technologies, which are now almost impossible to obtain. be resolved. Articles stating the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the impossibility of a military solution to the conflict are multiplying in specialized magazines. Numerous editors, commentators and journalists who months ago declared their unconditional support for Ukraine’s military efforts are now calling for a cessation of hostilities and any form of negotiations.

Trench warfare
The reason for this gloomy mood lies in the virtual failure of the once promising counter-offensive that began in the spring and summer of 2023.
What was intended to be a swift attack based on Western tanks, which Ukraine has found so difficult to obtain, turned into trench warfare thanks to successful preemptive defense by Russia. According to Zaluzhny, “as in the First World War,” the warring parties plunged into a “war of attrition” and a seemingly intractable “military stalemate.”

Critical point
The problem with the current situation is that neither side seems willing to accept it as a defeat or a victory. Just a few weeks ago, Putin gave a speech in which he again renounced Ukraine’s right to exist as anything other than a vassal state, while Ukraine does not accept the extensive amputation of its territory. Thanks to cooperation with China, India, Iran and other countries in the Middle East, Russia returned to a comfortable economic situation and also increased its military budget to an incredible 30% of GDP. The economic situation in Ukraine is not so good, but as long as Western support remains, it will be able to continue its military operations.

Western support is precisely the critical point at the current moment: in the US, Donald Trump, who opposes support for Ukraine, is leading in the polls ahead of the presidential elections in November 2024. crucial to the election, Biden will be under terrible pressure to abandon the matter. If this happens, the world will face a whole series of questions about what the future of Ukraine, Europe and even the Western world will be like.