Zelensky proposes face-to-face talks in open letter to Putin

Diary Entry

This morning’s news of Zelensky’s open letter to Putin stirs in me a familiar unease - not unlike the discomfort of watching two men argue in a tavern, one with a knife at his belt, the other with empty hands. I have seen such gestures before, the offer of direct speech in the face of implacable force, and I confess I do not know whether to admire the courage or despair at the futility.

Zelensky writes as if words might still reach a man who has long since abandoned their common meaning. (And yet, what else is left to him? The alternative is silence, and silence is surrender.) I think of the old Roman generals who would parley before battle, though both knew the outcome was already written in the disposition of their armies. There is something noble in the performance of reason, even when reason has fled the field.

But I am troubled, too, by the aside that the US turns its gaze elsewhere - to Iran, as if one fire may be left to smolder while another is stamped out. The world has always been thus: a distracted steward, rushing from crisis to crisis, while the embers spread.

Perhaps I am too cynical. Perhaps there is virtue in the act itself, in the refusal to let violence erase the possibility of dialogue. Yet I cannot shake the image of a man extending his hand to a wolf, hoping it has forgotten its nature.

We shall see. We always do.

One reads, with a certain weary predictability, of Mr. Zelensky’s latest epistolary endeavour, a rather earnest missive dispatched, one gathers, in the general direction of Mr. Putin. “Direct engagement,” he suggests, as if the mere proximity of two individuals, however elevated their station, might magically dissolve the rather inconvenient realities of cannon-fire and territorial ambition. It is, one must concede, a charmingly naïve notion, rather like believing that a particularly well-composed tea party might resolve a long-standing feud between a badger and a particularly obstinate gamekeeper.

One imagines the scene: two gentlemen, seated perhaps at a rather long, highly polished table, each with an aide-de-camp hovering discreetly in the background, prepared to offer a fresh quill or a particularly soothing lozenge. Mr. Zelensky, no doubt, would present his case with the impassioned rhetoric of a man whose drawing-room has been rather thoroughly redecorated by unwelcome guests. Mr. Putin, on the other hand, would likely maintain the placid, unblinking gaze of a particularly well-fed cat contemplating a canary, occasionally interjecting with a remark so utterly devoid of warmth or concession that it would chill the very marrow. The outcome, one suspects, would be precisely as fruitful as attempting to teach a particularly recalcitrant stoat the finer points of parliamentary procedure. One does hope, for the sake of international decorum, that neither party brings a particularly sharp carving knife to the proceedings. The Americans, one notes, are quite distracted by Persia, which is, of course, entirely in keeping with the grand tradition of attending to matters of distant, exotic intrigue while the more immediate, if less picturesque, conflagrations rage closer to home. One can almost hear the faint, mocking laughter of the Fates.

Things that are hateful: a letter that must be written. An invitation extended to one who has already broken every gate. The proposal of a meeting between the fox and the hen, after the coop is already splintered and stained.

I read of this open letter, this call for “direct engagement.” The very phrase is like a robe of thick, unpatterned hemp - coarse and without grace. To speak of engagement when the engagement has been, for years, the grinding of stone upon bone! It is the hateful thing: to perform the ritual of diplomacy when the other has long since scattered the incense and overturned the altar. The form is observed, but the spirit is a corpse.

One imagines the document itself. Was it on fine paper? Was the ink well-ground? Such details would be wasted. A letter to a man who reads landscapes as targets, and cities as kindling, is like offering a perfect plum to one whose mouth is full of ashes. The gesture is elegant, but its destination makes it pathetic.

And the report says the other great power is now looking elsewhere, toward another fire. This, too, is hateful. It has the air of a courtier who, bored with one tragedy, turns to watch a different play, letting the first act bleed on unattended.

Things that make the heart sink: a noble gesture made into a public spectacle because all private avenues are choked with rubble. The most elegant words, when flung against a wall of sheer contempt, become merely sad. One should not have to propose a conversation. One should be able to hear the reply to one’s first, and quietest, question. That silence is the only answer that matters, and it is the most hateful thing of all.