Ukraine is certainly an “increasingly fading project” to the media; and the hoi polloi was never that interested in the first place. The same thing is happening with Israel. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a most wooden, unattractive character who makes sure that he is out of the country as much as possible, and far away from what he is putting his country through.

Nothing, including all the money he scams from the gullible West, will save Ukraine.

“Zelenskyy as a fighter "for freedom”? What nonsense. It's unsung ordinary people fighting and dying while he struts the world stage.

DonaldTrump is essential to ending Ukraine's tragedy, and getting Zelenskyy out of our faces.

An interesting article in this week’s Economist magazine provides a more nuanced, if sobering, view of the conflict. It argues that Ukraine cannot succeed in this war in achieving its aims of recovering all the territory it has lost. It should retain this as an aspiration, and certainly not recognise Russia’s false territorial claims, but not fight for it now. Rather, it should set realistic war goals of preventing Russia making further gains. Its Western allies should ensure it has the military capability to make that happen now, and build up Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself in future, including by accelerating NATO membership.

The article argues that “Mr Putin attacked Ukraine not for its territory, but to stop it becoming a prosperous, Western-leaning democracy”. The most important outcome for Ukraine and the rest of the world is to make sure Putin fails.

It’s behind a paywall, but non-subscribers get access to a couple of articles a month:

http://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/09/26/the-war-is-going-badly-ukraine-and-its-allies-must-change-course