Six Wars He Never Ended
Trump’s fantasies of global peacemaking collide with Zelenskyy’s reality and Putin’s tanks waving the Stars and Stripes.
It was advertised as a summit, but let’s not kid ourselves: what played out in Washington was a geopolitical intervention. Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived as the sober man in the room, the Europeans shuffled in like weary family members who’ve seen this movie too many times, and Donald Trump staggered through the script as the patient in denial. Meanwhile, out on the battlefield, Putin’s tanks provided the perfect metaphor, rolling across Ukrainian villages flying both Russian and American flags. If you wanted a picture of how Trump’s antics translate into Kremlin propaganda, there it was: Moscow’s armor wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.
Zelenskyy spoke plainly about dead children and abducted families. “Today there have been a lot of attacks and a lot of wounded people and the child was dead, a small one, a year and a half old,” he said, reminding the world what’s at stake. He pressed for prisoner exchanges and security guarantees. Trump, meanwhile, responded with carnival arithmetic: “A lot of people last week. I mean millions of people killed.” Millions, in a week. Intervention rule number one: confront the patient with reality, however awkward it gets.
