All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump.
All America’s allies, the great majority of Republican leaders who have bowed to him, and a good number of his own cabinet, know full well that Trump is trapped in a disinformation bubble, but Zelenskyy said it out loud at a press conference on Wednesday.
In this new world where the foreign policy of the most powerful country on Earth has been rapidly reorganised around the fragile ego of a sullen and resentful old man, you might as well launch missiles at America’s eastern seaboard as utter a few words of rebuke.
The kabuki performance that is international diplomacy is almost never dropped, but in this case, it is justified, and the world should line up with Zelenskyy.
That orange face paint certainly does make more sense now.