“Zelenskyy at the World Economic Forum in Davos was eloquent, serious, and to the point, telling a select audience of politicians, businesspeople, and highbrow opinionmakers that the only decent, the only morally defensible end to the present war in his country is a clear victory over those forces of evil, which want to obliterate Ukraine as a prelude to attacking Central and Western Europe.”
Stockholm
That President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made one more great speech, this time in Switzerland, cannot have surprised anybody, certainly not in the Kremlin, where nobody dared to speak openly, and where the primitive, threatening language of the chief warmonger reminds those, who may be listening, of this person´s early days as a budding crook in the streets of then communist Leningrad, now fascist Saint Petersburg.
Zelenskyy at the World Economic Forum in Davos was as usual eloquent, serious, and to the point, telling a select audience of politicians, businesspeople, and highbrow opinionmakers that the only decent, the only morally defensible end to the present war in his country is a clear victory over those forces of evil, which want to obliterate the Republic of Ukraine as a prelude to attacking Central and Western Europe. The President may not have said so directly, but he made it abundantly clear that nobody west of Ukraine can feel safe if the Ukrainians cannot feel safe. While here and there one may hear a murmur, that the killing must be stopped, that the Russians must be accommodated, that a way out of the killing fields should be found, the president made clear – as if clarity was needed – that the only durable peace is a just peace, which means a peace based on the fascist aggressor´s eviction from all Ukrainian soil, after which Russia, whatever its shape, must be made to pay reparations for the immense damage done to Ukraine [for the moment we are talking, I believe, about a sum of up to €200 billion]. Any compromise, any compliance with Russian dreams and pipedreams, will compromise the democracies. This means that any plane, rocket, tank, cannon, grenade, or mine invested by the West in Ukraine is an investment in the future of Europe.
Certain voices – and I am sure that the president had them in mind – claim that the war has frozen along a thousand-kilometer-long front. That is dangerous thinking. Very few wars freeze forever, and even if they do, they tend to warm up. The West went sweetly to sleep after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014. The next, much larger and much more costly aggression followed in 2022. If we in the West start dreaming again – as the war moves into its third, bloody year – we shall be woken up to a brutality, which very few of us can imagine this winter. The present stalemate at the front is not caused by any failure of the Ukrainian armies but by a reluctance of the West to supply Ukraine with the full panoply of armaments needed by Ukraine to guarantee the security of our civilization. Ukraine must be assisted to the point, where Ukraine can defend itself properly on the land, in the air, and at sea. Give Russia, for centuries an aggressive and imperialist power a pause, and Russia will regroup and return with a vengeance.
The fascist leadership in Russia goes on threatening. That is a sign of its weakness. It wants to frighten, but the threats are hollow. Europe, even without the US, is in an infinitely stronger position than Russia. Nato-Europe is, roughly speaking, half a billion alert citizens, sustaining a highly sophisticated economy. What is Russia? 140 million people, often elderly, politically not very highly motivated, many of them dirt poor. And the economy? Brittle, not much bigger than that of Italy´s. What we need, and this is being pointed out again and again by Mr. Zelenskyy, is the political will to employ the overwhelming capacity of Europe and of the West confidently and decisively, aiming for victory. President Zelenskyy was met with warm applause in Davos. Now, on February 1st, at their extraordinary summit in Bruxelles, it is for the EU leaders to act.
I listened to the Ukrainian president´s speech in snow-bound Stockholm before a visit to Estonia and Finland, countries which like my own country, Denmark, well understand the need for support to the fullest the brave Ukrainian soldiers and the democratic leadership in Kyiv. They all are either members of NATO and the EU or – in the case of Sweden – they work very closely with NATO, expecting to become a member of the alliance. The so-called Nordic balance is gone, neutrality is no longer an option. You cannot be neutral in the equation between good and evil. This was, I believe, the gist of the speech that President Zelenskyy gave in Davos. Well done, Sir.
By Per Nyholm,
Danish journalist since 1960, based in Austria, columnist and foreign correspondent at the liberal Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The text was specially written for The Ukrainian Review.
