The conventional wisdom, repeated ad infinitum by parents for generations, is that the only way to stop a bully is to stand up to him. That advice is of little value when your tormenters are not kids on the playground but rather, the most powerful man in the world and his understudy. The last 10 minutes of the 50-minute press conference at the Oval Office in the White House may well go down in history as the beginning of the end of diplomacy as we know it, of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s self-styled image as the Great Resistor and perhaps even the conflict in Ukraine. In the current moment, though, it is also a warning about the dangers of confusing spectacle for transparency, of over-politicisation and the desire for “good television” over decency and statesmanship.

There were hints that things would get ugly in what should have been a routine press conference early on. While Donald Trump spoke of both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dying, and the need to stop the war, Vlodymyr Zelenskyy insisted on calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal and kept trying to paint Russia as blindly aggressive. Trump, throughout, displayed his soft spot for Putin and sought to blame the geopolitical disaster in Ukraine on his predecessor’s “incompetence”. A question from the press about why Zelenskyy did not wear a suit but instead, a “costume” mimicking a soldier didn’t seem to go down well either.

Things came to a head when Zelenskyy began questioning V-P J D Vance about Russia’s invasion of Crimea in........

© Indian Express