If there were a Nobel Prize for patience, Volodymyr Zelenskyy would run away with it. The Ukrainian leader’s February encounter with the just-inaugurated Donald Trump went down as the most infamous spectacle of schoolyard bullying in recent history. Zelenskyy had no choice but to shrug off that Oval Office taunting. His endurance test shows little hope of flagging. In Trump’s latest dressing down last Friday, he warned Zelenskyy his country would be destroyed unless he ceded territory to Russia. Zelenskyy has characteristically downplayed this recent bout of nastiness. Has Trump once shouted at Putin? That was a rhetorical question.
In fairness, Putin might also get a couple of nominations for the patience prize. Early into his ill-fated 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which Trump hailed as a “genius” move, the Russian president’s long-term hedge quickly came into view; he would gain in negotiations from a re-elected Trump what he could not win on the battlefield. Such talk was dismissed at the time as far-fetched. But to judge by Trump’s actions since January, rather than his words, the Kremlin’s bet is paying off. Without conceding to any of Trump’s demands, Putin was given a second summit with him this year — this time hosted by Hungary’s pro-Putin Viktor Orbán. Zelenskyy will need to dig even deeper for the necessary forbearance in the coming days.
Trump, by contrast, is increasingly impatient. On Monday he said that of all the global conflicts, there is just “one more to go”. Among others, Trump claims to have ended wars between Israel and Hamas, India and Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Zelenskyy’s stubbornness robbed Trump of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in his view. Much like Gaza, Trump sees Ukraine as a commercial opportunity with a lot of undeveloped seafront. He sees Zelenskyy’s government as an outgunned recalcitrant that should know when it is defeated. As Trump told the Ukrainian president in February, “you don’t have the cards”.