And the award for best actor goes to … Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This weekend’s Academy Awards ceremony did not celebrate the performative talents of Zelenskyy. Sure, Dayrl Hannah said “Slava Ukraine” (“glory to Ukraine”) before presenting the Oscar for best film editing. But the academy snubbed Zelenskyy, a former sitcom actor who played a president on television before becoming the actual president, by honoring Adrian Brody with the best actor nod when clearly Zelenskyy deserved it.
Maybe the academy worried that Zelenskyy would not say “thank you.” He certainly arrived from wardrobe dressed right for the role despite saying at Friday’s press conference, “I will wear a costume after this war is finished.”
For whatever reason, the actor-turned-president did not win on Sunday.
He did not win on Friday, either.
His American directors deserve much of the blame for this.
“Just finished a meeting with President Zelensky here in Washington,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tweeted prior to the Ukrainian leader’s meeting with Trump. “He confirmed that the Ukrainian people will not support a fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants and there are no security arrangements for Ukraine.”
The whole point of the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting involved a deal that would put American interests in Ukraine extracting rare-earth minerals. This would give the U.S. a financial stake in the country as it embeds Americans in Ukraine, a likely deterrent to future Russian aggression. Trump referred to this as “security in a different form, we’ll have workers there.”
Democrats, who oppose all things Trump, do not want this agreement.
“Zelensky repeatedly declined opportunities to sign the deal in Kyiv and Munich, and requested the meeting at the White House,” Mollie Hemingway points out. “It later came out that [Susan] Rice and Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and Alexander Vindman may have been personally advising Zelensky to do this meeting in the way he did — that they recommended him to be hostile and to try to goad Trump into blowing up. Even though he didn’t, and even though Zelensky’s actions horrified many normal Americans, the Obama team went on the airwaves to falsely characterize what happened.” (RELATED: The Evil People Surrounding Volodymyr Zelenskyy)
The president announced on Friday the plan to sign the agreement in the Green Room. It did not happen. Zelenskyy surprised him by saying he wished to discuss the matter further. He spoke not of peace but indulged in bellicose language. He spoke of the need for air defense and “real” security guarantees from the United States. He started arguing with Trump, without the president saying anything in the discussion to precipitate this non-sequitur correction, over Europe’s support for Ukraine by lecturing Trump that Europe has indeed given more than he gives them credit for. When Trump lamented the loss of life on both sides, Zelenskyy unnecessarily interrupted: “They came to our territory.” He insisted that Putin must pay for the damage done. He sought to undercut Trump’s message and did so with an increasingly argumentative tone.
All of this occurred prior to anyone saying anything about playing cards or a lack of gratitude.
A compliant media, to include Saturday Night Live, then went on to gaslight the American people. We did not see what we saw, they insisted. Instead, they said we saw Trump and JD Vance berate Zelenskyy without provocation. The first 42 minutes of the press conference ensured the last 10 explosive minutes. As body language expert Darren Stanton told the Washington Post, Zelenskyy appeared “quite angry from the outset” and “caught up in his own ego.” (RELATED: The Mendacious Media Coverage of Zelensky’s Stunt)
Trump deadpanned at the conclusion of the meeting: “This is going to be great television.” The former TV actor knows something about great television.
Unfortunately, this stunt amounts to the latest instance of Zelenskyy involving himself in U.S. domestic politics. Zelenskyy made a de facto campaign appearance for Democrats in Pennsylvania last fall. A private phone call between Zelenskyy and Trump acted as the centerpiece of Democrat attempts to impeach the president in 2019. Last week, he met with Democrats immediately before his Oval Office about-face.
He could learn a lot from Donald Trump. The president understands the need to stand above the fray between Russia and Ukraine to effectively broker peace. Zelenskyy, on the other hand, appears to take sides between Democrats and Republicans in American domestic affairs. This is a dangerous game. It finally blew up in his face Friday. This approach gave him a weak hand with Republicans, who happen to hold power at the moment. (RELATED: Trump and Zelensky — Is There a Way Back?)
This is unfortunate. Ukraine, the victim of an unjust invasion by a more powerful country, needs all the friends it can muster. The former comedian should act not merely for the glory of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He needs to act for, to borrow the translated words of Daryl Hannah, for the “glory of Ukraine.”
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