Mr Zelensky goes to Washington — visiting not his ally or friend, but master

Watching footage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his by now customary khaki basking in the warm embrace of a US Congress that appears intent on fighting Russia to the last drop of Ukrainian blood, one could only wonder at the contrast between the happy-clappy goings on there and the brutal reality of a conflict now into its tenth month with no end in sight.

This particular conflict has been and continues to be defined by base cruelty and atrocities committed by both contending parties. If a November US intelligence estimate is to be believed, the conflict in Ukraine has so far taken 100,000 lives on both sides. It has also displaced millions and wrought human suffering on a grand scale. Indeed, the conflict itself is an atrocity, made especially so by the fact it could well have been averted by the judicious deployment of diplomacy and honest dealing when it came to the negotiations that led to the Minsk Accords of 2014 and 2015.

Learning first from Zelensky’s predecessor, Poroshenko — then most recently and significantly from former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel — that the Minsk Accords were but a ruse…