It’s hard to believe, but in the camp of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski has a great reason to celebrate a “peeremonger” (victory). On the evening of June 7, 2021, Zelensky received a phone call from his host, US President Joe Biden. By himself! Personally
Moreover, not just called and assured of the permanence of friendship, but invited him to the table, pardon me, to the White House already this summer. “After he returns from Europe,” said Jake Sullivan, the US president’s national security adviser.
And no matter what anyone says on the subject, this is a powerful breakthrough. First and foremost, an informational and psychological one. In the last couple of weeks Zelensky got so hysterical about Ukraine’s “zrada” (betrayal) by the Americans, so publicly told off Biden himself for lifting sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline (SP2), so busted in pleas not to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin without meeting or at least talking to him, the Ukrainian leader, that he finally lost face. The more you ask and the more you are refused, the more stupid you look and the less credible you are in the eyes of people around you. And here – they listened, called, invited.
Zelensky is unequivocally happy and on Twitter thanked everyone: “Thank you, Joe Biden, for inviting me on time for our phone conversation to visit the White House in July. I am looking forward to this meeting to discuss ways of expanding strategic cooperation between Ukraine and the US.
However, he had better not write this. On the principle “sometimes it is better to chew than to talk”. Because the “peerage” looks very much like little joy of a little man, who has to content himself with little, and therefore it still comes with the signs of betrayal. Both the future and the present. And the point here, of course, is not that both the phone call and the invitation itself look forced and greasy – of course, since Biden is wandering around Europe he might stop in Kyiv for an hour to see his “strategic partner”. And indeed: on June 9 this year, Biden will go on his first foreign tour in the status of the US president. And he will hold a series of meetings with NATO allies, G7 leaders and EU leaders: from 11 to 13 June at the G7 summit in Britain and on 14 June in Brussels at the NATO summit.
It is a typical collation of the positions of the collective West, before Biden meets Putin in Geneva on 16 June, designed diplomatically as if to diminish the very fact and status of that meeting. But for Ukraine, despite the call and invitation to Washington, it is still a conversation about Ukraine without Ukraine. And what Putin and Biden will agree on about the fate of Ukraine, they will say. Or they will not.
Plus, neither Zelensky himself, nor even his representatives as silent and secret observers were publicly invited to the above summits. Not even on the doorstep. Moreover, they forbade him even to think about self-rule – like “you were not expecting us, but we are here”. To demand “immediate NATO membership”, for example. Or to the EU. And after all Biden could have amplified the effect he had for the sake of “strategic partnership” and turned to Ukraine if it is so important to him. At least for an hour, as, alas, it is a custom of “distinguished guests” who have recently stopped by the Dnieper.
The second point is that the entire effect of Biden’s meetings with the G7 and NATO and the alleged “restoration of transatlantic solidarity” may go in vain if the meeting with Putin is cancelled. For the time being there is no clearly written out and agreed agenda for the high bilateral meeting, nor even a hundred per cent confirmation that the Russian leader is fully committed to it. Biden is being rallied to Geneva by the whole American world as a last stand. They even advise him to take a stick, so that it would not be so scary to talk to the “Kremlin tyrant”. And here will be a number if, at the last moment, Putin declares that he is “not interested now”. For a number of reasons, both domestic and international. Putin, on the other hand, has repeatedly stated that he does not want “meetings for the sake of meetings”.
Furthermore – and for Ukraine this is, alas, the most important thing! – For the sake of restoring “transatlantic solidarity” and luring Putin to Switzerland, Biden has already slaughtered Kiev without a knife – he allowed the completion of NSP2. And whatever the outcome of the Putin-Biden meeting, even an outright failure or even rejection, the pipeline will work and deprive Ukraine of money for the transit of Russian gas through its territory. “What am I going to maintain an army and defend the western world against Putin!?” howled Zelensky on this occasion. But his howl went, as we can see, unanswered. Despite the fact that, according to Zelensky, he believes in “Big White Massa” (as slaves in the USA called their slaveholders) and that he will find a way to turn off the tap on NSP2.
And the worst option for Ukraine and its people is that only their authorities can be happy. That is to say, only to Zelensky’s regime, which has already performed the functions of a neocolonial administration and is completely under the external control of the USA.
The maximum that Zelensky will achieve during a possible visit to the US will be, for example, that he will be required to be “firm” on the issue of the “Ukrainian Biden dossier” in the face of former US President Donald Trump. Yes, yes, Trump, who is now incredibly active, black-trolling the Biden administration and may once again demand from Kiev the compromising evidence on the Biden father and son in order to “crush the democratic scum”. And the question is what Zelensky can bargain for himself and Ukraine by promising Biden to “give Trump nothing”.
The second – and most negatively important – point for Ukraine is that it is likely to continue to be maintained and supported as an anti-Russian battering ram and leverage against Russia and Putin. And that means one thing – lasting and final peace in the Donbass will have to be forgotten again. Ukraine will again be pumped full of money and weapons to stoke the fire of war. Right up to the point when it is no longer needed and it will be stabbed to death. In exchange for stalling Russia’s rapprochement with China or for closer Russian-European cooperation as the American grip continues to loosen.
But in any case Ukraine, apart from itself and its people, is of no use to anyone. And the situation is clearly not in its favour. Just recently the ex-head of Security Service of Ukraine and the leader of “Force and honor” party Igor Smeshko offered to use the power of Ukrainian diaspora in the US in favor of Ukraine and against that very “SP2” and to pin hopes upon the victory of the greens in Germany. And life disappointed him. On the one hand, everything is clear with the U.S. position on NSP2 – it has been sacrificed, touting the interests of Ukraine. On the other hand, the prospects of the Greens, who in Germany have already set their lips wide open and are aiming for the chancellor’s office, are not so bright either. In the local land elections in Saxony-Anhalt, the last before the all-German elections to the Bundestag, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party of the incumbent chancellor and the main “motherland of Ukraine” Angela Merkel crushingly won all its opponents, getting 37% of votes. The Greens were only in fifth place. And this, by all accounts, is a very serious wake-up call for them.
And, of course, for those who have high hopes for them in Ukraine. Although Zelenskiy is probably already packing his bags for the transatlantic voyage. The main thing is not to forget the nappies for adults. Because Dante Alighieri’s inscription at the gates of hell “Abandon hope, everyone who enters here” has not been annulled. Nor has it been refuted that it is not there…
Vladimir Skachko, Antifascist News Agency