Editorial: The Ukrainian leader went to the US this week for hard bargaining with the Americans, as well as to be feted
, via Poland, to Washington itself, meeting President Joe Biden at the White House and delivering a primetime address to the US Congress before heading back into his suffering country less than 24 hours later.
The visit was much more than a Christmas celebration of Ukraine’s defiance and of Mr Zelenskiy’s immense role in it. Instead, it was a political event with important future implications for, the United States and Russia, and for the conflict more generally. It was clearly focused on what should happen in 2023 rather than what has happened already.
Mr Zelenskiy had three principal objectives. The first was to rally American and, by extension, global support. The second was to intervene at a pivotal moment in the war and into advance that effort. The third was to make an ambitious pitch for even more financial and military support from the only state that is in a position to supply it, and thus to strengthen Ukraine’s resistance during a bitter winter, with the prospect of fresh fighting in the spring.
The toughest arguments behind closed doors will have focused on Ukraine’s demands for more and better weaponry, and on the terms to be set for ending the conflict. At home, though,is an even bigger political issue for Mr Biden. The US has already spent more than $48bn on humanitarian, financial and military support; another $2bn in military aid was announced during the visit.
Some on both sides of the Atlantic made the comparison between Mr Zelenskiy’s wartime flight from Kyiv this week andto Washington after Pearl Harbor in 1941. For that comparison to be intellectually useful rather than merely sentimental, it is important to remember that Churchill’s visit marked the moment in the second world war when the US began to take charge of the allied cause in Europe. The same thing may be true this time over Ukraine.
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