Volodymyr zelensky

It was 11:15 p.m. in Kyiv, just after the curfew, and the military had set up its checkpoints on the city streets. Finding your way home after hours can be a hazardous business. The city is paranoid about assassins and saboteurs, and in wartime few are above suspicion. Things were looking ominous until my friend Sasha declared: “we are late for breakfast.” The guards waved us through. This was the daily password, shared with those important enough to move around after curfew. Checkpoints and curfews were a few reminders of the war in Kyiv, where I was just before last week’s deadly air strikes. In the capital city, life was approaching some form of normalcy.

The Russian army has been the source of an endless list of shortcomings and embarrassments over the last eight months. There are simply too many of them to count, from the failure to move through Kyiv’s suburbs in March to the sinking of the flagship Moskva in April to the loss in September of more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory in just days. But by far the most humiliating to Vladimir Putin personally was last weekend’s attack on the twelve-mile bridge that connects mainland Russia with Crimea, the peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014. That bridge, which cost more than $7 billion to build, was one of Putin’s pet projects, a visible signal to the world about Moscow’s staying power in the region.

Russia has invaded Ukraine, and the images are all over the news. CNN has gone to round-the-clock coverage of bombs falling near Kyiv, refugees pouring into Hungary, Putin’s war machine rolling down a misty highway. We’re outraged by this, roused to action, as we righteously hang a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag off the porch and learn to spell the names of places like Kherson and Mariupol. The West, listless and fractured, seems suddenly united again as opposition to Russian imperialism grows and... ...and it’s summer. The weather is warm and a gentle breeze is tinkling through the chimes. The kids are off from school, horsing around the kitchen, and the lawn isn’t going to mow itself.

The strategic Ukrainian port city of Mykoliav, that has been under constant Russian bombardment since the onset of war, was locked down for an entire weekend in early August as troops searched for Russian collaborators that had been calling in locations of Ukrainian troops and ammunition. The government arrested scores of traitors during their house-to-house search. Meanwhile in the capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky has also been sounding the alarm over Russian collaborators after firing both his prosecutor-general and head of the intelligence agency for treason. The former spy chief was a close childhood friend of the president. There are allegations that the entire intelligence agency is riddled with spies, with many defecting to Russia in the early days of the invasion.

As the war in Ukraine approaches its six-month anniversary this coming Wednesday, the fighting shows no sign of stopping. Peace talks are a figment of the imagination, as Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky remain just as committed to achieving their objectives today as they were when the war first broke out. The Russians continue to pound residential areas with artillery in the Donbas, hoping to slowly capture more territory after months of slow, high-cost maneuvering in the Donetsk region. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, are settling on a new strategy in the south, harassing Russian supply lines deep into Russian-occupied territory.

The saying goes that there is nothing that celebrities can’t make about themselves. As it turns out, that includes a war in Ukraine caused by an invasion of Russia that's already seen thousands of casualties. It's almost as though there are two wars happening at once: one on social media, where guerrilla clips from the front lines show bodies, shelling, and damage to homes, and one playing out in the pages of Vogue magazine. This week, it was revealed that Oscar-winning actress Jessica Chastain had visited with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The photo was posted to his official Telegram account and was taken from his presidential palace. There were also several shots of Chastain seated at a table with Zelensky having a discussion of some sort.

The legendary nineteenth-century showman P.T. Barnum is credited with first uttering the words, “all publicity is good publicity.” Barnum had the good sense to die a century before he had the chance to see the Zelenskys’ Vogue photo shoot. https://twitter.com/MayraFlores2022/status/1552267933501489152 Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife posed for renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. In one shot Olena stands near Ukrainian female soldiers at the Antanov airport. In another she holds hands with her husband in the presidential office compound in Kyiv as the pair stare pensively at the camera.

The extraordinary skill, courage and effectiveness of Ukraine’s fighting forces have given the US and NATO an extraordinary opportunity to reestablish military deterrence in Europe and show the Kremlin that unprovoked military aggression will be repelled and ultimately defeated. But President Biden and NATO leaders are dithering. They are simply not acting with the urgency needed to fully support Ukraine’s military. It’s the same failure they displayed for the year prior to the invasion, when Putin was building up tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine’s border. Even now, the US and NATO are hesitating to provide the full complement of essential weapons to Ukraine, including air-defense systems, MIG fighters and a lot more drones, anti-tank and anti-ship weapons.

It is now a matter of consensus that Vladimir Putin never intended to fight the type of war that now faces him in Ukraine. What was plainly meant to be a blitzkrieg-style assault has devolved into a war of attrition, with death, destruction and violence on a scale unseen in Europe since the disasters of the last century. It is quite plain that the Kremlin, despite its bluster, is aware of this. The Kyiv government's claims of Putin dismissing his generals and raving in fury at his security services are consistent with events on the battlefield; indeed, after two weeks of fighting, Russia has only managed to decisively claim one Ukrainian city.