CNN
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is like the West’s moral conscience, with his daily video commentary highlighting his country’s heroism in resisting a Russian invasion that has degenerated into murderous barrages against civilians.
But while he’s making it impossible to look away from his nation’s agony, Zelensky is increasingly running headlong into the war’s harsh reality: President Joe Biden and European leaders face political and geopolitical red lines that Russian President Vladimir Putin, a nuclear-armed tyrant, simply does not in his relentless destruction.
Soaring oil prices are also playing into the underlying equation of the war: Will Western pressure strangle the Russian economy and force Putin’s hand before Ukraine and its people are destroyed or driven to a mass refugee exodus? And how long can public opinion in the US and Europe hold firm?
Zelensky’s poignant appeals have made lawmakers in the US and Europe cry on video calls, revived the West from its post-Cold War slumber and captivated the world with his defense of democracy. He’s the antipode to the cruelty of Putin. If one man ever changed the world, few have done so as quickly as Zelensky.
In the latest video message in his near three-week campaign to inspire and shame the West into saving his non-NATO nation, Zelensky left his bunker and appeared defiantly in his government office, lauding Ukrainians protesting against Russian troops.
“(They say), ‘I’m here, it’s mine, and I won’t give it away. My city. My community. My Ukraine,’ ” Zelensky said in the message transmitted on Monday evening.
This comic-actor-turned-tragic-hero’s daily episodes narrating Putin’s attempt to destroy Ukraine injected steel into the global effort to turn Russia into a pariah, which went further and faster than anyone expected. Zelensky has effectively drawn the West into a proxy war against Moscow as the US and allies funnel anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets to Ukraine. International sanctions have pulverized the Russian economy, sent the country’s currency, the ruble, to record low levels and could eventually fan resentment against Putin inside Russia and compromise his ability to supply and reinforce his troops in Ukraine. Oligarchs around the Russian leader have seen jets, super yachts and fortunes seized by the West in an effort to build pressure inside the Russian leader’s regime.
But nearly two weeks after the invasion began, the question for the West is becoming what options there are for stepping up the economic heat rising on Russia while avoiding a parallel military escalation.
And there are increasing signs that for all his heroism, Zelensky may be coming up against the West’s prudent desire to avoid triggering a worstcase scenario that could lead to a third world war.
But he has not given up on the US President, saying in an interview on ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir” on Monday, “I am sure that the President can do more. I am sure he can and I would like to believe that. He is capable of doing that.”
“Everyone thinks that we are far away from America or Canada. No, we are in this zone of freedom,” Zelensky said in the interview, noting how the war in Ukraine could also soon affect the rest of the world. “And when the limits of rights and freedoms are being violated and stepped on, then you have to protect us. Because we will come first. You will come second. Because the more this beast will eat, he wants more, more and more.”
The no-fly zone won’t fly
But Zelensky’s repeated calls for a no-fly zone have been rebuffed…
