Zelensky Rejects Putin’s Trick-Fire

Putin asked for silence. Zelensky offered him exposure.

I’ve always worried about President Zelensky’s political nous — that ugly little ability to play the game. The man is stubborn to a fault. That look on his face this week, when he was sitting across from Donald Trump at the Vatican, was a story in itself. Or we could rewind to the Oval Office — that brutal moment when Trump and J.D. Vance piled onto him in front of the cameras, turning him into a gut-wrenching spectacle for the world.

Was that necessary? Did he need to endure all that? Why not just sign over Ukraine and get some rest? All that pressure, all that pain — why not just give in?

He won’t. He’s more likely to dig in than give in.

That inability to play the manipulators’ game, while sitting squarely in the middle of global power politics, is exactly why so many of us feel tethered to his vision of the future.

It’s also his blind spot. He’s surrounded — not by soldiers, but by strategists who’ve played this game for decades. He doesn’t need to become one of them. I don’t want that. I just want him to find advisors who can play it on his behalf. People who can feed him ideas that push the battlefield — political, economic, moral — back in Ukraine’s favor.