Tag Archives: Volodymyr Zelinskyy

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KAOS

This week’s convening of the United Nations General Assembly spotlights the warped state of our world in 2026.

You used to know the good guys and bad guys. You used to think that we, here in the United States of America, fell into the good guys category.

Now, it’s hard to say.

American presidents served as the guide in the fights against fascism, Soviet communism and terrorism. Their legacy is the Marshall Plan, the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the capture of Osama bin Laden.

This month alone, an American president said he might annihilate Iran, started a trade war with Canada and said of seizing Venezuela’s oil “to the victor goes the spoils.” He said Ukraine’s retaliation for the wanton murder of civilians “unfortunately” resulted in the depletion of Russia’s oil and diesel supplies.

The American president thinks Russia, Saudi Arabia and North Korea are allies. He thinks Canada, Mexico, Denmark and South Korea are not.

This topsy-turvy world reminds me somewhat of the secret agent shows of the 1960s.

Because it seems as though the world’s alliances aren’t formed around national interest. They seem based on the self-interest of individual oligarchs.

The most famous of these is the James Bond series, which continues today (BTW: Jack Lowden from “Slow Horses” would be a great 007!). Bond and British Intelligence joined forces with other nations to combat SPECTRE – which stood for SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

Does that sound like the alliance of Trump, Mohammed Bin Salman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Khalil al-Hayya, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Il to you?

It’s an alliance that based on the enrichment and personal powerlust of each of them. The idea that everything is zero-sum – that it’s either their way or no way.

Notice one name is missing.

It’s not. Vladimir Putin is the Ernst Blofeld of the modern-day coalition of the wicked. He’s the mastermind. He’s the won with the cat, who will open the trap door for the piranha tank to punish someone for incompetence or insufficient loyalty.

There are days when it seems as though there’s a supervillain plot to take our money and render us beholden. In the process, the world’s real problems – hunger, disease, climate change, technological encroachment – get shunted.

Who is our James Bond?

Actually, I think there are three.

One is the military guy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He’s the one with the creative bent that has given a smaller defender the upper hand against a dark, relentless foe. Watching video of drone attacks on Moscow and St. Petersburg is stunning and a sign the good guys have a shot of winning this.

The economic guy is Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Trump has tried to cripple the greatest neighbor any nation ever had. He insulted its sovereignty and belittled its enterprise and culture.

Carney’s not having any of it. He knows he’s the one with the actual business acumen. And he pressing that knowledge, forming alliances with other nations and selling Canada’s abundance to nations not stupid enough to tariff it.

The third James Bond is us.

We are the agents of change if we want to be. We can lash out against Trump, against the would-be feudal lords of the Middle East, against the hegemonists of Asia and against Putin’s connivance.

The 2026 midterm elections are 40 days away. Early voting has started in four states and will soon be available in all but a handful. Yes, you can vote by mail, but Trump will do what he can to invalidate that, so a convenient early time is the best solution.

When the James Bond movies came out, there was other spy entertainment. 

“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” teamed an American and a Russian as good guys against a world dominance organization named Thrush – which actually didn’t stand for anything.

And, on “Get Smart,” Maxwell Smart was Agent 86 in the comedy about the American espionage group CONTROL’s battle against an evil enterprise. It was appropriately named by the hilarious do of Buck Henry and Mel Brooks.

KAOS.

That’s what it seems like we’re living through. Villains who’d be comical if they weren’t so goddamn dangerous. 

It’s time to take control.

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THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD

St. Petersburg, Russia, is 655 miles – as the drone flies – from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. It’s closer to Helsinki, Finland.

And yet, the home region of Vladimir Putin found itself under attack this week from drones launched by the Ukrainians.

If I had written that sentence four years ago, when Russia launched its war against Ukraine, expects would have said I was nuts. I would have thought I was nuts. There was no way Ukraine could outlast what was then perceived as one of the world’s two or three most powerful militaries.

Shame on the experts. Shame on me.

There are few things to feel good about in 2026. One of them is the valiancy of the Ukrainian people and their leader, the Winston Churchill of the 21st century, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They have survived far longer than anyone believed possible when Russia started rolling tanks across their border.

In fact, there are many experts who believe Ukraine is winning this war. The drone attack on St. Petersburg, undeterred by Russia’s supposedly impenetrable air defense, is a prime example. Ukrainian drones have struck Moscow and other parts of the vast country as well. Their range is growing.

And Ukraine has become a leader in anti-drone defense, franchising its technology to other countries looking to fend off unwanted attacks.

According to the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, Russia has paid an amazingly high price for its aggression. The estimated death toll is something in the area of 300,000. By contrast, the United States lost 58,000 people in the Vietnam War – and we thought that was a disaster. Counting those injured, Russia’s casualty count exceeds 1 million.

That’s got to reach the point that it affects every town, village and hovel. Where almost everyone knows someone who has suffered from this debacle.

Russia’s economy is shattered. Its reputation in the world is wrecked. But just like in Pete Seeger’s song about Vietnam, “The Big Muddy,” the big fool – in this case, Putin – says to push on.

Not that Ukraine hasn’t suffered. Far from it. Many of its cities are piles of rubbles, resulting from aerial bombardment, missile attacks and drones. Way too many civilians – and way, way too many children have been killed or maimed. The scars of this will take generations to heal.

Ukraine has been bolstered by the help from the world’s democracies. Particularly the European Union, Canada and Japan, with unflinching support from London to Warsaw to Ottawa to Berlin to Tokyo to Rome. The bad guys in World War II are the good guys this time.

We used to be among the good guys. President Joe Biden and many in Congress, on a bipartisan basis, stood up for Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians. They were treated like the world heroes they are – Biden traveling to Kyiv clandestinely to show his support, Zelenskyy speaking before a joint session of Congress.

Now it’s hard to tell which side the United States is on. Zelenskyy is probably still smarting from the humiliating treatment he received from Trump and Vance when he came to the White House last year.

And Republican talking points on social media include posts bragging – bragging! – that Ukraine is no longer getting generous funding from the U.S. When I saw one of these posts on my feed recently, I was tempted to ask the poster what the weather was like in Novosibirsk.

Of course, Trump has been too busy causing trouble in the rest of the world. There’s the idiotic war against Iran, the grab for oil in Venezuela and the saber rattling against Cuba and – and this is even more confounding than thinking Ukraine would stand up to Russia – Canada and Greenland.

Hopefully, the midterm elections will change some of this trajectory. But November seems like forever away. Five more months of death, destruction and Trump still seeing Putin as some kind of model for world leader conduct.

As frustrating as are all the domestic debacles perpetrated by the second Trump mishegas, the fact that we are the wrong side in plain battles of evil vs. good is pathetic. When Ukraine wins its war against Russia – and I’m among those now convinced that it’s Zelenskyy, not Putin, who holds the cards – we will not deserve the credit and the gratitude that others in the West will garner.

Not from the country that, in 2026, is becoming the leader of the free world.

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