by Lubomyr Luciuk
The old man in the Kremlin has told those around him that he’d be hanged if he stopped his war against Ukraine and Ukrainians. So when America’s “peace envoys” (sic!) came to bow before this wanna-be “Tsar of all the Russias,” Putin served them up the usual script. The “Kyiv Regime” is illegitimate, he proclaimed. It has a “Nazi” agenda. He said his legions are making real progress at the front. Presumably, Witkoff and his sidekick know all this is a lie. Yet as Putin prattled, his American guests mouthed platitudes, seemingly forgetting what they know to be true: Ukraine will not self-mutilate, surrender its land or give up its people to the Russian aggressors. Appeasement just isn’t in the Ukrainian DNA, especially now that Ukraine has thwarted Putin’s attempt to conquer it. Sooner or later, Putin will dance on the end of a hangman’s rope. The only question is whether Ukrainians will have the pleasure of tying the knot, or whether this Vladimir who-still-thinks-he-is-Great will be done in by his confederates. That is more likely. Either way is fine by most of us.
But as I watched these two envoys offer their paeans to Putin, I saw a remarkable difference in whom they met, where they met and what they saw—a tale of two cities, as it were. In Moscow they sat in a gilded room opposite a bunch of grim apparatchiks, presided over by a sullen war criminal, in a kitschy setting that I suppose both men are accustomed to, given Mr Trump’s Goldfinger fetish. Putin said nothing of consequence. Nor did they. Of course, some words of import may have passed their lips in private. It doesn’t matter. Neither Witkoff nor Kushner negotiates for Ukraine. They have no mandate to dismember that country. They aren’t even liked by most Ukrainians. They’re seen as shills.
Yet you wouldn’t know that if you watched them arrive in Ukraine. Ukrainians are nothing if not hospitable. Blocked by Putin from flying directly into Kyiv, Jared and Steve took a train in from Poland instead. They were met by senior members of Ukraine’s wartime leadership—officials and commanders who greeted them with marked respect. Not a one asked why they had never bothered to come to Ukraine before, to see for themselves the human costs of Russian aggression. Doing so wouldn’t be polite.
When they got into Kyiv, President Zelensky welcomed them even more effusively, the perfect host. Watch that footage carefully, and you will see a brief reincarnation of Volodymyr the showman. He revealed a T-shirt he was wearing, emblazoned with the phrase “Kyiv Regime.” On their very first visit to his embattled capital, Volodymyr Zelensky took delight in mocking Putin’s propaganda. While I never found his pre-presidential comedy style to my taste, this display had me laughing out loud. Volodymyr skewered the KGB man in the Kremlin. Even Jared snickered.
Then Zelensky did something more telling: he took these tourists to St Sophia, to stand before the 11th-century Oranta, the Virgin Mary whose monumental image has long been associated with the defence of Kyiv and Ukraine. Did the Americans get it? Did they realize that what they were seeing was not the invented history the Kremlin peddles but a surviving monument to a
civilization that flourished for centuries before Muscovy became a power? Nor is this icon merely a relic of the past. Many believe the Oranta still watches over Kyiv—a symbol of the city’s endurance and of a country that stands on Europe’s edge, guarding its gates.
Ukraine’s tenacity is worth recalling, for it cuts against everything Putin told his guests the day before. After Kyiv fell to the Mongols in 1240, Muscovy’s rulers rose to power by serving the Golden Horde for many decades, then claiming the legacy of Kyivan Rus’ as their own—building an empire on the myth that Russia, not Ukraine, was its rightful heir. They weren’t. They stole that history. Far, far too many believed their fib. Putin still spouts it.
Nowadays we know that Ukrainians are not Russians, never were Russians, and have no intention of becoming Russians. Since February 2022, about one and a half million Russian invaders have learned that too, the needless casualties of Putin’s war—killed, maimed or missing in action. Their lives have been squandered by Moscow’s attempt to extinguish a nation that refuses to be erased. Putin got at least one detail right. He and his cronies will be held accountable for this butcher’s bill.
Watching Steve and Jared move from Moscow’s gilted rooms to the ancient heart of Kyiv, I didn’t think of them as “useful idiots.” No one in Kyiv really believes either man is a decision-maker. But Ukrainians are raised to treat even unprincipled guests with courtesy once they come under your roof. Zelensky did just that. He took these two to a millennium-old place of worship, one that predates Moscow’s later pretensions of being the “Third Rome.” Whether it meant anything to men for whom making the deal matters more than caring about whom they’re dealing with, I couldn’t say. But Volodymyr did his best to educate his visitors.
Anyway, they have seen the Oranta, and have been shown a symbol of a history Putin pretends doesn’t exist. Whether this revelation edges them toward being more useful for Ukraine is uncertain. But when I observed Kushner and Witkoff in Moscow, then later in Kyiv, I remembered the truly great opening line of the remarkable novel, A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
Charles Dickens’s words, written in 1859, describe Ukraine today. Ukraine will prevail. Because it always has.
Lubomyr Luciuk is a Professor Emeritus of the Royal Military College of Canada and a Senior Research Fellow of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto.
