On: 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.