A Biden-shaped hole in the future
In Kyiv at war, everything comes down to a US president in his last days in office
KYIV, UKRAINE — “Esteemed participants of the conference,” Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday morning, sounding — for all the world, if only momentarily — like any Chamber of Commerce guy welcoming any random trade convention. “Dear friends of Ukraine. … I am very grateful to you for being with Ukraine.”
Then the Ukrainian president’s tone darkened. “But it is also very important for us to remember what it means to be with Ukraine,” he said. “It’s not about presence. It’s not just about an emotional relationship.”
He surveyed the week’s news from the front. Russian artillery had shelled a village in Donetsk. Three staffers from the International Committee of the Red Cross were killed, but the Red Cross’s own communiqué did not mention Russia. A Russian missile sank a Ukrainian bulk carrier, loaded with grain and bound for Egypt. “And Egypt offered no reaction. None whatsoever, though that was their food security. That's how Russia treats Egypt’s food security and free navigation: the way a typical terrorist does.”
The emerging theme of Zelensky’s remarks was a familiar tension in Ukraine’s defence against Russia. Ukraine could not have survived Vladimir Putin’s attack for this long without massive Western aid. But the aid is never quite enough, and it never arrives quite quickly enough, to turn the tide against Russia. Ukraine knows it is not alone, yet it feels alone.
And all of this — the need for help, the constant uncertainty about whether it will come — is coming to a head. Politics demands it.
This was, indeed, the emerging theme of the whole weekend. I was in Kyiv for the 20th annual Yalta European Strategy conference (inevitably shortened to YES), a leading international gathering to discuss Ukraine’s place in the world. Launched by billionaire businessman Victor Pinchuk in 2004, its original goal was to figure out how to get Ukraine into the European Union, at a time when 10 former Communist countries, including Poland and Hungary, were about to join the EU. When Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, the annual meeting moved to a Kyiv hotel ballroom. When he launched the full-scale invasion in 2022, YES became an informal annual council of war.
Fareed Zakaria was there. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor of The Economist. Boris Johnson, whose great popularity in Kyiv I will have occasion to explain later in this post. Radek Sikorski, Gabriel Attal, Timothy Garton Ash, Anne Applebaum, David Petraeus and much of Ukraine’s military and political leadership. I paid my way there, which means this newsletter’s paying subscribers covered my costs. So the rest of this account is for them, with my deep gratitude.