Ukrainian summitry is all reality TV, zero substance
By Andreas Kluth / Bloomberg Opinion
So much has happened in recent days, it’s easy to overlook how little has happened. To wit: Nothing material. Not when it comes to matters of war and peace in Ukraine, where Russian leader Vladimir Putin continues to bomb civilians, to detain children (for which he is wanted by the International Criminal Court) and more generally to terrorize a sovereign nation that he considers an errant satrapy.
That, however, is not the impression you may have formed if, like me, you’ve been following the summitry and pageantry on YouTube, TikTok, X, Truth Social or your medium of choice.
In the endless scroll of our screens, one meme chases another while all orbit around the bright yellow-orange star of the show, President Donald Trump. The medium is the message, the philosopher Marshall McLuhan observed six decades ago. And the message today is that this U.S. president — for better or worse — is shaping world affairs.
Here is Trump applauding Putin as the Russian leader approaches on a red carpet in Alaska. There he is again, receiving the rehearsed gratitude of the Ukrainian president and seven European allies, who rushed impromptu to the White House to contain whatever damage the KGB-trained Putin may have wreaked in Trump’s mind. There he’ll soon be again, if and when Trump gets both Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, into the same room, in what would be a “trilat” made for Reality TV.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-ukrainian-summitry-is-all-reality-tv-zero-substance/