The political theatre of absurd is in full play with thousands more waiting to die
By T N Ashok
NEW YORK: Welcome to the most expensive theatre production in modern history, where half a million casualties serve as background extras while three aging narcissists swap costumes and pretend yesterday’s betrayals never happened. The Ukraine war has devolved into something far more obscene than mere geopolitical chess—it’s become a rotating circus of self-serving reversals that would make Machiavelli blush.
When Kremlin mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov sneered that Trump’s latest sanctions threats had “no effect” on Russia, he wasn’t just deflecting—he was delivering the punchline to the cruellest joke of 2025. This is the same Trump who, at August’s Anchorage summit, practically gift-wrapped Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk for Putin like a desperate used car salesman trying to close before the lot closes.
But here’s where the farce gets truly grotesque: Putin, the man who spent four years cultivating Trump as his useful idiot, suddenly discovered principles when victory was handed to him on a silver platter. The same autocrat who orchestrated election interference, disinformation campaigns, and strategic blackmail to keep Trump in his pocket decided that accepting Trump’s territorial concessions would be somehow beneath him.
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky—the comedian-turned-president who Trump once extorted for dirt on Hunter Biden, who watched Trump block military aid while Russian forces massed at his borders—now gushes that “God saved Trump” from assassination attempts. It’s the kind of Stockholm syndrome that would fascinate psychiatrists if it weren’t determining the fate of European security.
Let’s be clear about what happened at Anchorage: Putin had Trump offering him everything he’d killed for. Crimea, the Donbas, the land bridge to the sea—all legitimized by American presidential decree. For a man who’s spent three years grinding through Ukrainian cities at the cost of Russia’s economic future and international standing, this should have been Christmas morning.
Instead, Putin chose theatre over territory. Accepting Trump’s offer would have required admitting that Russia needed American permission to keep what it had already conquered. For a dictator whose entire brand depends on projecting strength against Western weakness, the optics were poison. Better to reject the handout and maintain the fiction that Russia fights from positions of strength, not charity.
So Putin ordered his largest airstrike on Kyiv since 2022—a $100 million fireworks display designed to prove he didn’t need Trump’s approval. The message was clear: Russia takes what it wants through force, not through backroom deals with American has-beens. The cost? Potentially alienating the one Western leader foolish enough to give him everything he wanted.
This is the kind of strategic genius that brought us the three-day “special military operation” that’s now in its fourth year.
Trump’s reversal from Putin appeaser to sanctions hawk reveals something uglier than mere political opportunism—it exposes a man so desperate for relevance that he’ll reverse course within weeks if the polls demand it. The Anchorage summit was supposed to cement Trump’s reputation as the master dealmaker, the only man who could end the Ukraine war through sheer force of personality.
Instead, he discovered that giving away other people’s countries makes for terrible optics. European allies recoiled in horror, congressional hawks smelled weakness, and even JD Vance—his own ideological protégé—publicly questioned Trump’s judgment. Within a month, the man who’d offered Putin a territorial buffet was threatening him with sanctions and demanding Europe cut Russian oil imports.
This isn’t politics; it’s performance art by a man who’s forgotten the difference between governance and reality television. The tragedy is that real people die while Trump workshops his foreign policy positions in real time.
Perhaps most disturbing is Zelensky’s transformation from Trump’s victim to his cheerleader. This is the same Trump who tried to extort him, who called his country corrupt, who blocked the military aid that Ukraine desperately needed as Russian forces prepared for invasion. Trump’s first impeachment literally centred on his abuse of Ukrainian desperation for American weapons.
Yet here’s Zelensky, praising Trump as divinely protected after assassination attempts, treating him like a beneficent ally rather than the man who nearly handed his country to Putin before the war even began. It’s a masterclass in political survival that comes at the cost of dignity and truth.
Zelensky understands the brutal arithmetic: American military aid keeps Ukrainian resistance alive, and Trump controls the Republican Party that controls half of the American government. Principle is a luxury that leaders of invaded countries cannot afford.
The trajectory of this three-way dance of delusion points toward an even darker future. Trump’s sanctions threats are hollow theatre—he lacks both the will and the coalition to impose crippling economic measures on Russia. Putin knows this, which is why Peskov can dismiss them with such casual contempt.
Meanwhile, Europe watches in horror as its security architecture crumbles while American leaders treat Ukrainian sovereignty like a bargaining chip. The Paris “Coalition of the Willing” meetings have become group therapy sessions where 30 nations pretend they can fill the vacuum left by American abdication.
The endgame is becoming clear: a frozen conflict that legitimizes Russian territorial gains while Ukraine bleeds out slowly, sustained by just enough Western aid to avoid collapse but not enough to achieve victory. Trump gets to claim he “ended” the war, Putin gets to keep his stolen territories, and Zelensky gets to survive another day.
The only losers? The Ukrainian people, European security, and the increasingly quaint notion that international law means anything at all.
What we’re witnessing isn’t diplomacy—it’s collective amnesia masquerading as pragmatism. Every betrayal gets forgotten, every humiliation forgiven, every principle abandoned in service of immediate political survival. The Ukraine war has become a monument to the complete hollowing out of moral authority in international relations.
History will remember this moment not as a clash between democracy and authoritarianism, but as the moment when cynicism achieved perfect expression. Three men, each trapped in his own delusions of grandeur, using a nation’s suffering as props in their performance of strength.
The curtain will eventually fall on this grotesque production. The only question is how many more will die before the audience finally stops applauding. (IPA Service)
