Ukraine

God bless Emmanuel Macron for his perseverance and self-confidence. The French president seeks to lead Europe and turn the continent into a strong, independent player in its own right. And he is eager to take on the hard, thankless diplomatic work that few of his peers are willing to do. Whether it was his ploy in 2019 to connect then-US president Donald Trump and then-Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on the phone or his months-long, intensive personal dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the war in Ukraine, Macron invests a lot of time and capital into these gambits. Unfortunately for him, many of them fail to accomplish anything of substance. Macron wasn’t able to convince Rouhani to speak with Trump (although Trump reportedly agreed to the call).

After thirteen months of war, Ukraine’s infrastructure is in a dire state. Its armies are preparing for a counteroffensive, and its economy is not likely to fare any better this year than it did in the last. Kyiv will need more money from the West — and the West will have to provide. The need is clear, but the will, in the United States and Europe, less so. Thankfully there is a way around this looming problem, courtesy of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.  Representative Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma has submitted the Make Russia Pay Act, which authorizes the federal government to seize, deem as forfeited, and liquidate Russian assets that are currently frozen in the US.

Relationships between dictators are bound to be a bit strange, but Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s stands out for its theatrical quality. Meetings are carefully choreographed for maximum propaganda effect. Lavish gifts and gilded state rooms are the norm. Fluent in the language of autocratic flattery, the two always have gushing praise for each other. In 2019, before traveling to Russia, Xi said that Putin was his “best and bosom friend,” while just a year earlier Putin praised Xi as being a “remarkable thinker” and “a good friend I can count on.” Leading up to this week’s visit, Putin referred to Xi as his “good old friend,” and recalling Confucius, wrote, “Isn’t it a joy when a friend comes from afar!

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine opened the most dramatic divide between East and West since the Cold War. Most of these divisions were clear beforehand — Hungary and Turkey were longtime thorns in the side of NATO, for example. Yet South Africa’s warming ties with Russia and China seemed to come out of nowhere. South Africa's initial reaction to the invasion was the same as much of the Western world, demanding that Russia leave Ukraine. That did not last, however. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on March 17 that “The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region.

Getting into Ukraine can be tricky, especially if you don’t speak Ukrainian or have a national television network paying your way. I recommend the latter: it seems slightly easier and they have hair and wardrobe budgets. I cross into Chop on a short train carrying a mix of old couples and young kids. When I get off I’m directed to a booth manned by soldiers, who ask my business. Journalist, I say. The guard asks for press credentials. The best I can do is a copy of the magazine, but reading The Spectator is apparently something he’s unwilling to do and I’m waved through immediately. Russian spies, take note. I have two hours to kill before my train to Lviv, so I do what anyone would do — wander the blacked-out streets in search of a drink.

The contrast between the two presidents could hardly be starker. One is dwelling in his own dream palace, indulging fantasies about a return to superpower status while transforming his dismal fiefdom into a larger North Korea. The other is on a roll, creating a new grand alliance to prevent his foe from claiming suzerainty over Ukraine and engaging in further territorial predation. In his state of the nation address on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin served up his usual nauseating soup of anti-Western conspiracy theories, complete with references to Ukraine’s “neo-Nazi regime” and a Western “totalitarian” mission. If anyone knows anything about totalitarian impulses, it’s Putin himself.