Putin has waited for this moment for 3 years, as Zelensky is left in the cold
Nick Paton Walsh, Nick Paton Walsh, CNN
For three years he was the center of the room, but now is perhaps unsure if he is even in the right one.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been a totemic figure of the West’s unified stance against a marauding, autocratic Russia. A Churchillian presence forcing Europe into a moral stance against a Kremlin head who had so successfully sought to divide and bribe them for years.
Yet Zelensky cut a reduced figure on stage alongside US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday in Kyiv. He had hoped to meet US President Donald Trump in person to discuss a wide-ranging vision of peace, after the US president suggested Friday they might meet imminently, and his team immediately set about trying to schedule it. Instead he was presented with what Zelenksy called “serious people” – and a largely financial deal handed over by Bessent, the US billionaire turned money-man, which he didn’t sign.
