Rajan Menon
While addressing the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on 5 September, Vladimir Putin, in yet another attempt to sow confusion in American politics, remarked that while his “favourite” candidate in the presidential contest was Joe Biden, “he was removed from the race, and he recommended all his supporters to support Ms Harris. Well, we will do so – we will support her.” For good measure Putin criticised Donald Trump for having imposed sanctions on Russia, “like no other president has ever introduced before”.
These statements are the diplomatic equivalent of what’s known these days as “trolling”. Can anyone seriously doubt that Putin sat smiling as Trump delivered his victory speech in the early hours of 6 November? As for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, it’s safe to say that no leader, save perhaps Kamala Harris, can be more dejected than him. The feeling is justified. Trump has called Zelensky a “salesman”, one who bilked American taxpayers to pursue a futile war and blames him for not making concessions to Russia in early 2022. (The latter is a bogus accusation that, as I have argued elsewhere, has nevertheless gained wide currency in the United States and other countries.)
In late-night texts to me, friends in Ukraine tried to put a brave face on the emerging outcome. One, a journalist, paraphrased the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko: “the only way to win is fight”. Another, who trained to serve as a sniper in Ukraine’s army, was more cynical (and characteristically salty). “For us,” she wrote, “nothing changes because no one has balls except those of us who are here”. These reactions are not surprising. Ukrainians can hardly throw in the towel and say that everything has now become hopeless – not when they are fighting with their backs to the wall. In the four visits I have made to wartime Ukraine, a refrain I heard in multiple variations was that Ukrainians cannot afford to stop fighting because, if they lose, they will not merely have lost the war, they will have lost their country. It might seem overly dramatic, but that’s easy to say sitting in New York or London.
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