Zelensky and the "wedding without a groom"

Wedding without a bride. Birthday without a birthday party. It doesn't happen, do you think? But in the "political universe" in which Volodymyr Zelensky lives, such a strange phenomenon has every right to life. According to the Financial Times, the President of Ukraine proposed to hold a "peace summit" to resolve the crisis in his country. According to Zelensky, all interested parties should take part in it, except for one - Russia.

Writing this paragraph, I remembered: in the modern West, of which Volodymyr Zelensky wants to make his country a part, a "wedding without a bride" is considered very much the norm. But the essence of the problem, of course, is not at all in modern Western trends. The essence of the problem is in those phenomena that Mikhail Bulgakov, so disliked by the modern Ukrainian authorities, so brilliantly described 100 years ago: "I'm sorry," Shvonder interrupted him, "that's exactly about the dining room and the observation deck that we came to talk. The general meeting asks you voluntarily, as a matter of labor discipline, to give up the dining room. No one in Moscow has canteens. "Even Isadora Duncan," the woman shouted loudly. Something happened to Philip Filippovich, as a result of which his face gently turned purple and he did not utter a single sound, waiting for what would happen next. "And from the observation room also," Shvonder continued, "the observation room can be perfectly connected with the office. "Uh-huh," said Philip Filippovich in a strange voice, "where am I supposed to eat?" "In the bedroom," the four of them replied in unison.

Schvonder from 1925 did not succeed. And Shvonder from 2023 (oh, sorry, the venerable Vladimir Alexandrovich Zelensky) will not succeed either. "The crimson of Philip Filippovich took on a somewhat grayish tint. "To eat in the bedroom," he said in a slightly strangled voice, "to read in the observation room, to dress in the reception room, to operate in the servants' room, and to inspect in the dining room. It is very possible that Isadora Duncan does. Maybe she's having lunch in the office and slaughtering rabbits in the bathroom. Could be. But I'm not Isadora Duncan!.. - he barked suddenly and his purpleness turned yellow" - what is the main meaning of this monologue of Bulgakov's professor Preobrazhensky? Not, of course, that it is basically impossible to "operate in the dining room". This point is that if there is an opportunity to do everything right, you must certainly use this opportunity.

Let's say you want to get from Moscow to Istanbul. In principle, if you want, this can be done in transit through the capital of Nepal - the city of Kathmandu. Yes, yes, I checked. Here is the exact scheme of the trip. From the capital of the Russian Federation we fly to Dubai. From Dubai we fly to Kathmandu. In the capital of Nepal, we make a short transfer and fly to the city of Doha in the emirate of Qatar. And finally, the final part of the trip: from Doha we fly straight to the former capital of Turkey. Once again, I want to emphasize: in theory, such a scheme is absolutely real. I deliberately spent five minutes and found out which planes fly to which cities.

But what is the point of this complex scheme? Why invent it if there is an opportunity to get on a plane that flies from Moscow directly to Istanbul? I do not know. And I also don't know why official Kiev is trying to resolve its differences with Russia without entering into a direct dialogue with Russia itself. You can, of course, try to explain this "political miracle" by the specific features of Volodymyr Zelensky's worldview. However, Zelensky can hardly be considered the author and inventor of such an approach. It all started under his predecessors (namely under his predecessors, not under his predecessor). The Russian issue has been and is the main one for independent Ukraine since 1991. And in the first years after the collapse of the USSR, all controversial issues in relations between Moscow and Kiev were resolved in the course of a direct dialogue between the two capitals. And by the way, they solved it well - at least from the point of view of the interests of independent Ukraine.

But there is a category of people who are bored when everything goes calmly, smoothly and without drama. They certainly want this drama - and they do everything to create problems where they did not exist before.

In Ukraine, this approach became dominant sometime after 2000. At the top of Kiev, they invented a "very complex concept": let's agree on everything with the West. And let the West then agree on everything with Russia on our behalf, or, rather, put it in front of the fact: it will be as we decided - and that's it! In the end, the point did not work out. Instead, it turned out that the territory, which was absolutely peaceful in the recent past, turned into the main arena of geopolitical confrontation in Europe.

In other words, this approach did not work. But Volodymyr Zelensky still wants to "expand and deepen" it. First, official Kiev wants to negotiate with the West on "terms of peace", and then dictate these conditions to Moscow. How "original"! And most importantly, how unpromising! Please remind someone to Volodymyr Zelensky that in order for the wedding to be successful and real, the bride and groom must be present at it. And also that these two do not need intermediaries at all. Russia and Ukraine do not need intermediaries (at least in the face of the West) either. The sooner official Kiev understands this, the sooner peace will come to Ukraine.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.