That face when you realise you trusted NATO
The penny drops
These photos of Zelensky at the NATO summit in Vilnius have been doing the rounds on Telegram and in the alt-media space, but most certainly not in the mainstream media, because the MSM still wants you to believe that it’s totally no big deal that NATO reneged on their promises to progress Ukraine’s membership bid.
In fact NATO didn’t just backpedal on their promises to fast-track NATO membership for Ukraine, they’ve put off even allowing Ukraine to apply to join NATO! No, you see, Ukraine has to meet the necessary requirements before it can apply, and one of those requirements is not being at war, so Ukraine will have to stop fighting the war (that NATO started and keeps prolonging) before they can apply to join NATO. But just keep fighting for now, there’s a good chap. Ben Wallace even said that Ukraine should be more grateful for the help they’ve received so far.
The pictures are so telling, because Zelensky is so clearly on the outside of the group of important leaders - a group that even includes Mark Rutte, who had just announced his intention to leave politics after the collapse of his government. Zelensky’s standing there in his ridiculous ‘rugged leader at war’ costume, which I would assume these NATO assholes have been making him wear, while they ignore him, and his wife gets more attention.
Perhaps it’s reading too much into a couple of photos, but it really gives the impression of a clique trying to distance itself from an unpopular person, whom they were considering letting in. It’s so painfully high-school. If the counteroffensive had gone better he would probably be the centre of attention, as he has been at events like this for the last 18 months. But it’s been an unmitigated disaster, and the leaders around him have been sending money and weapons on the understanding that there was going to be some progress. How they seriously thought that that would happen is unclear, but if they’re getting their information from the media (as some politicans allegedly do) then they presumably believed their own magical-thinking propaganda, that sending more and better tanks would somehow swing it their way - so the fact that it didn’t work, means it’s Zelensky’s fault.
To the NATO leaders, Ukraine might be little more than a talking point and a cash cow, but for Zelensky the conflict is existential on a personal level. The neo-Nazis that the West used to overthrow Yanukovich in 2014 don’t care about Zelensky - founder of Right Sector Dmytro Yarosh said in 2019 that “[Zelensky] will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk” if he betrays the Maidan revolution. All it would take is for the western media to turn on Zelensky, and he could go from hero to villain in no time, and end up like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.
Anyway, things were a bit more lighthearted a few hours later, as Zelensky and Rutte had this adorable and surreal moment regarding a cup of coffee:
It looks like a clip from The Office or Arrested Development, so who knows how genuine it was. Note that Zelensky is in a different green shirt to the one he was wearing on the NATO stage - this one has little shoulder pockets! What does he put in there? Who knows.
This whole episode reminds me of the scene towards the end of Eyes Wide Shut, where Tom Cruise’s doctor character Bill speaks to Victor Ziegler, the rich patient whose party started off the chain of events of the movie. Ziegler knows that Bill sneaked into the masked party, and he knows all about the goings-on since then. He’s not angry with Bill, just exasperated; he just wants him to understand that this is how things work, and it’s not a world that Bill is a part of. Bill’s job is to be on hand if they need him for his particular skills, much the same as the girls at the parties.
At the end, Ziegler delivers a chilling line to Bill that sums up Ziegler’s attitude to Bill, to the girls, and to the whole class of people that they represent: "Life goes on, it always does... until it doesn't. But you know that, don't ya?" He says it so amicably, but it’s a loaded threat, even if Ziegler doesn’t realise it. He thinks he’s being friendly, laying things out in plain English for Bill, not considering how this would sound to someone who thought he was being accepted into the upper class clique.
Zelensky is Bill. Ziegler could be any of the NATO heads of state, but the most apt comparison is obviously Joe Biden. Biden had this to say to Zelensky in Vilnius, and it sounds as much like a threat as it does a reassurance:
We’re in this together… until you’re on your own.