The contrast between what the Ukrainian president has been willing to do, and what western leaders have been willing to do to help, is the source of his moral power
In a way, the Ukranian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, ruined the Americans’ plans. Early this year, when American intelligence concluded that Vladimir Putin would indeed invade Ukraine, no one expected it to be a long war. The conventional wisdom, shared by western analysts and Putin himself, was that Ukraine would rapidly fall to Russia’s military, and that after some strong words and a tepid round of sanctions, the US and Nato would cut a deal with Russia. They would give Putin hegemony over much of Ukraine – the eastern part, if not the whole thing – and what was left over would get an aspirationally democratic government with a European orientation. This detente would last until Putin got greedy again, at which point the cycle of Russian expansion and western accommodation would resume, this time a little further to the west. At some point in that version of events, Zelenskiy himself would have been arrested by the Russians. And then he’d be gone.
Instead, the man who addressed Congress on Wednesday morning did so from a besieged and defiant Kyiv, shelled and bombed nightly by the encircling Russian forces but still in Ukrainian hands. Zelenskiy appeared via video on a large screen at the front of a room full of senators and congresspeople in blue velvet chairs. He was unshaven. He looked unslept. By remaining in Kyiv, even as Russian troops encircle it and Russian bombs fall from the sky, Zelenskiy has made himself into a symbol of the Ukrainian people, whose surprising courage, determination, and defiance in the face of the Russian aggression have called the west’s moral bluff. Their stand, and Zelenskiy’s stand, have transformed what could have been a cynical calculation about how to manage Russia’s renewed imperial ambitions into a more meaningful – and more challenging – test of the west’s pro-democracy values. Days ago, when Americans offered Zelenskiy a discreet and secure exit from Kyiv, he reportedly told them: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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