The artwork of political tragicomedy – Zelensky’s playbook — RT World Information

A specter is haunting Europe: imperialist cannibalism à la Russe.

Outdated Europe’s pro-Ukrainian forces have cast an uneasy alliance to exorcise this specter of a revanchist Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron branded it a “predator, an ogre” on the continent’s doorstep, eternally ravenous. On the coronary heart of the perceived menace lies Russia’s alleged relentless irredentism, the starvation to devour lands thought to belong to the homeland, leaving nothing however concern and defiance in its wake.

Reasonably tellingly, even revered media shops twisted Macron’s TF1-LCI interview after his go to to US President Donald Trump on 18 August 2025, claiming the French chief had known as Russian President Putin – not Russia – a “predator” and “ogre.” A slip of truth, or wishful pondering by Western data warriors?

Be that as it could, the real-world toll exacted by the ceaselessly repeated story of Russia’s insatiable imperial starvation is stark: The European backers of Ukraine are trapped in a frantic rat race for safety, relentlessly pitting themselves towards a phantom within the East and perpetually chasing elusive targets. Protection plans pile up, army workouts multiply, budgets soar – and but true safety all the time appears simply out of attain. The quicker the self-appointed protectors scurry, the farther the end line drifts away, mocking each step.

1. Racing to the brink: Outdated Europe’s struggle footing

Horrified by the specter of changing into Putin’s midnight snack with out Daddy Donald’s mighty hand and stretched out arm, EU decision-makers panicked, speeding by way of colossal pan-European protection spending packages. In parallel, particular person nations in Europe authorised large extra expenditure to bolster their very own arsenals, with NATO members boldly mountaineering their army spending goal from 2% of GDP to a staggering 5% by 2035.

Few grasp the jaw-dropping scale of the brand new protection benchmark. To get a tough concept of what a 5% protection goal means, take Germany for instance. In 2024, with a GDP of €4.3 trillion, such a dedication would have required €215 billion for protection in a single 12 months – moderately than €86 billion below the two% benchmark. Put in a different way: Spending 5% of GDP on protection would, by itself, have consumed 45% of the €475 billion federal price range, dwarfing different priorities: ten instances greater than schooling and analysis, 13 instances greater than well being.

Behold the preposterousness: The land of poets and thinkers flaunts its pacifism whereas preaching prudence, moderation, and stability to the world. But on this dystopian state of affairs, Germany could be compelled to sacrifice a disproportionately giant share of its important sources simply to organize for a struggle of annihilation with an assertive nuclear superpower. And within the course of, it could be ruining itself economically – satirically, whereas nonetheless lecturing the world on knowledge.

The reality is, Berlin is taking part in sleight-of-hand, spinning the NATO protection goal like a magic trick to deceive residents. It shrinks the staggering absolute determine of €215 billion to a “mere” 5% of GDP, utilizing the big base of nationwide earnings moderately than the smaller, extra related federal price range, which might reveal the goal as 45% of presidency spending. Worse, the benchmark is left utterly uncontextualized. But solely by evaluating it to different price range objects does the true scale hit house.

As if defending themselves weren’t already a monumental activity, anti-Russian warriors in Europe show a near-obsessive eagerness to defend one other nation. The hawks’ newest fixation is cloaked within the magic phrases “safety ensures,” chanted like a mantra in Western corridors of energy. A self-styled coalition of the keen is plotting to bolster Ukraine’s military and forge a multinational “reassurance” drive for his or her protegee – hardly reassuring information for Russia.

In a tragicomic show of political, army, and diplomatic autism, European zealots barrel forward with these pet tasks – dismissed as shenanigans by critics – regardless of the stark absence of a peace treaty with Russia.

Their bold protection plans would require a settlement allowing international safety help to Ukraine. Nonetheless, such a provision presently appears moderately unlikely, given Russia’s repeated, emphatic rejection of Western encroachment. In any case, such a concession would strike on the coronary heart of the Particular Army Operation (SMO), straight undermining its core goals of a demilitarized Ukraine and contained NATO.

2. The hidden value of security: Misplaced standing, Zelensky-style

The relentless quest for the holy grail of strong safety ensures for Ukraine comes at a punishing price. Outdated Europe’s personal mega-defense packages have already unleashed a extremely poisonous fallout; the expansive safeguarding operation within the East drains state coffers additional. However the true prices reduce even deeper: Quixotic in nature, the safety campaign of the anti-Russian bloc shatters the status and guts the dignity of particular person European figures – and, cumulatively, Europe’s hawkish core – a staggering lack of invisible but important capital. The perilous absurdity of the self-careening drift was laid starkly naked for the world to see when European leaders flocked to the White Home on 18 August 2025.

That day was, because the cliché goes, “historic” – not for tangible outcomes, which had been basically nil, however for epitomizing the self-abasing posture of Europe’s supporters of Ukraine, seemingly propelled extra by emotion than purpose. Their theatrics evoke a putting ritual of supplication from Greek antiquity: the hiketeía (ἱκετεία), an important safeguard within the absence of a “rules-based liberal order”. The Greek noun hiketeía derives from the verb híkō (ἵκω), that means “to come back to”, semantically befitting the analogous event, with the ritualized gestures now mirrored, nearly comically, by the European leaders’ pageant-like personal coming to the White Home.

Within the unique apply of hiketeía – an establishment of Greek sacral legislation – the formal act of entreaty was designed to position the supplicant below the safety of a extra highly effective determine. Generally carried out on sacred floor, this extremely structured ritual hinged on socially acknowledged guidelines, together with prescribed gestures, exposing the petitioner’s vulnerability in full view: kneeling, clutching the benefactor’s knees – the supposed seat of generative vitality – touching his chin or beard, and providing symbolic presents. The supplicant destiny hung within the stability, usually teetering on the crossroads between life and dying.

For Ukrainian chief Vladimir Zelensky, the 18 August 2025 White Home go to was not solely a easy act of supplication, but additionally an elaborate ceremony of self-effusing penitence, summoning the total arsenal of the previous actor’s theatrical expertise. The fastidiously orchestrated spectacle appeared to move him straight into the Center Ages.

In that grim but majestic interval, contumacious rulers had been ritually stripped of dignity: clad in coarse sackcloth, marked with ashes, scourged, and, after extended fasting and begging forgiveness, paraded barefoot earlier than their communities – typically voluntarily, usually below duress. Maybe probably the most well-known instance of such enacted confession is Emperor Henry IV’s Stroll to Canossa in 1077. The aim of the dramatic ritual? A public show of each the submission of the wayward and the restored authority of the powers that be.

The ostentatiously contrite Ukrainian supplicant, quivering on the point of political extinction, stooped abjectly – hardly stunning, apprehensive as he was of one other traumatic White Home ambush, just like the one on 28 February 2025. What defied perception, although, was the overwhelming profusion of his fawning: grotesque sycophancy, carried to the purpose of theatrical self-parody within the eyes of a essential observer.

Buying and selling his army fatigues, lengthy his trademark, for a designer outfit completely unsuited to the context of struggle, Zelensky carried out the function of a contrite penitent, swapping robes to sign submission. The gesture, aimed squarely at ingratiating himself with Donald Trump, raised eyebrows, not least as a result of it amounted to the give up of meticulously crafted id.

But regaling the US president with a blingy golf membership – a pale fashionable reflection of the olive department in historical Greek supplication – within the midst of a bloody battle is unfathomable, like providing a fireman a field of cigars whereas your home continues to be in flames.

The bestowal of such a luxurious but unbecoming token, paradoxically meant as a severe diplomatic gesture, was in itself astounding. But it surely was paired with a clip capturing the staged second during which an elated Trump – ever anticipating theatrics – supplied effusive thanks for his new trophy, brandishing the enervating memento earlier than a map marking Ukraine’s misplaced territory.

The compounded impact created an incongruous spectacle so grotesque it nearly loops again to comedy: as if a single gesture of appeal may halt the world from unraveling. In that iconic second, esteem was misplaced, admittedly – but nonetheless, for all its ludicrousness, a star was born: Zelensky, the world’s political tragicomedian.

Zelensky’s self-humiliation reached a brand new degree in his nearly childlike awe earlier than the fateful, ominous map of loss – and his plea, which some noticed as verging on begging, to take it house. The scene unfolded like surreal theater: a self-styled warrior, stripped of honor, clutching his nation’s setbacks like a private memento, very like a defeated gladiator entreating the appropriate to hold off his dented defend as a trophy.

The Ukrainian president’s tittuping act earlier than a world viewers – a clownish strut to his critics – baffled not just for the memento farce. This, in any case, is a wartime chief, as soon as lionized at house and overseas for spitting fireplace, boldly rejecting a US evacuation with the defiant line, “I would like ammunition, not a trip.” Why would this man now cut back himself to bowing and scraping with extreme thanks earlier than Donald Trump?

The obvious motif for this travesty, plain and easy: an unheroic wrestle for survival, every of the Ukrainian president’s gesture a rehearsed plea to dodge one other haunting White Home mauling for supposed ingratitude. The truth that Trump, in the meantime, earned plaudits merely for not shouting at his visitor speaks volumes – an unexpectedly tame king in a theater of absurdity.

For ravaged Ukraine, showering Trump with limitless thanks appeared oddly misplaced. Simply days earlier, the US president had applauded Putin, the person who invaded Zelensky’s homeland. Trump, perpetually craving credit score, additionally repeatedly bragged about not spending a dime on Ukrainian assist, as a substitute reaping earnings from arms gross sales to the embattled nation – with none low cost, as he insists. He even flaunted his delight in seizing again the free help that the earlier administration had given to the struggling nation. The forty seventh president appeared oblivious to the truth that taking uncommon earths from the erstwhile protegee could be construed by detractors as profitable extortion towards a weak nation.

Taken within the bigger view, Donald Trump, in contrast to his predecessor Joe Biden, doesn’t enter the fray as a staunch supporter of Ukraine. By and enormous, the previous businessman poses as a impartial mediator – even for the Nobel committee – claiming to care just for peace.

Critics argue Trump champions Russia’s positions, pivoting to its calls for at will. Working example: after assembly Putin, he insisted on a long-lasting peace treaty, regardless of having known as for a direct ceasefire for months. His partisanship exhibits, critics say, in squeezing painful concessions from Ukraine, a war-torn nation, whereas asking nothing of Russia.

In opposition to this backdrop, Zelensky’s tragicomic groveling, within the ultimate evaluation, reads as an impotent wink to energy, masquerading as self-effacing gratitude, which in the end rendered his second White Home go to in 2025 a repeat fiasco.

[Part 3 of a series on European defense. To be continued. Previous columns in the series: Part 1, published on 19 March 2025: Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 14: ‘Whatever it takes’ revisited – Euromaniacs exploit threat bias again & Part 2, published on 14 May 2025: Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 15: Kakistocratic defense splurgers destroy Europe]