On: War in Ukraine: Zelensky proposes face-to-face meeting with Putin to end years-l

Diary Entry, 30th May 2024

It is a most commendable gesture, this proposal of a face-to-face meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders - so generous, in fact, that one cannot help but admire the arithmetic of it. Here we have a man who, having already surrendered a portion of his country’s territory, now offers to surrender the very principle of negotiation itself. A full ceasefire, he says, as though war were a tap to be turned off at will, and not a mechanism by which empires digest weaker states at their leisure.

I have often observed that the surest way to end a war is to concede everything at once, thereby sparing the aggressor the tedious business of gradual conquest. Why trouble with sieges and bombardments when one might simply invite the invader to tea and hand him the keys to the city? Indeed, the efficiency is remarkable: no more ruined villages, no more displaced families - only the quiet hum of bureaucratic annexation, conducted over a polished table.

Some may object that such meetings serve only to legitimize the butcher at the feast. But I find this concern misplaced. If a man has already taken your arm, why not offer him the other? It is, after all, the logical conclusion of diplomacy. And should the terms prove unfavorable, one might always console oneself with the thought that it is better to be devoured politely than to resist rudely.

I do hope this proposal is received with the gravity it deserves. After all, nothing soothes the conscience of conquest like the appearance of consent.