Anyone a year ago would have imagined that the actor Volodímir Zelenski sit face-to-face with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to treat the last war in Europe. But the comedian that came to the president now faces a test key and to big for his newly released mandate. The summit of the two leaders of this Monday in Paris, next to the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, is —at the margin of concrete results— important and symbolic for the peace talks, stuck since three years ago. But the appointment bilateral Putin-Zelenski represents a true game change.
Zelenski, who swept the presidential elections this past April with a speech focused on fighting corruption and ending the armed conflict in the Donbás with the separatists supported by Moscow, has made gestures to unfreeze the negotiations —the first meeting with Putin— and has opened a path of dialogue, which he achieved this summer is an important exchange of prisoners.
But the president Ukrainian, whose gestures will be scrutinized to the millimeter, at home and abroad, also is the one who has most to lose from what happened in Paris. Zelenski, in the center of the hurricane that has triggered the process of impeachment of the us president, Donald Trump, investigated by asking the leader to be Ukrainian to investigate a political rival, arrives at a clear disadvantage and with an unwanted prominence globally.
The gestures to revive the dialogue and the signature of the call formula Steinmeier, a roadmap to implement the agreements of Minsk, will have cost tough internal reviews and has made him, for the first time, to lose some point on the popularity index. This weekend, some five thousand people —on all nationalist groups— took to the streets in Kiev against what they consider a “capitulation” to Moscow. A way of warning the leading Ukrainian for his meeting with the Russian president. Well into the night, the international services agencies had not distributed any images of the relevant and expected bilateral meeting.
There are those who do not trust in the skills of the former actor to be measured with a leader like Putin, who has a reputation of knowing very well the weaknesses of their partners and to take advantage of them —perhaps putting into practice their skills from his time as a spy of the KGB— and who accumulates two decades in power. In Kiev, in addition, there is the feeling that Berlin and Paris —especially in the last few months— are more akin to the Russian.
And if the images are important, a symbol of that imbalance was the arrival of the two leaders at the Elysee palace: Zelenski, first, aboard of a modest Renault gray; Putin, in his imposing limousine Aurus.
The Russian president, although it has seen its popularity among its citizens has fallen by the economic stagnation and the recent social reforms, do not have to explain the agreements to the house, where it has no opposition and no debate. In addition, Putin, who gives samples of set aside Russian ambitions to influence to some extent in Kiev, is satisfied with the approach of Macron and framed the quote from yesterday on his way to finish with the isolation of Russia, triggered by the annexed the peninsula to ukraine of the Crimea in 2014. Putin has returned to the table of the greats of the global geopolitics. Very gone are the images of the G20 summit in Brisbane five years ago, in which several leaders rehuyeron to the Russian president, who returned to Moscow before the planned.
Zelenski, on the other hand, will have to explain with hairs and signals in Ukraine that tried this Monday in Paris. Any gesture can be interpreted as a concession, and feeds the criticism of the parties now in the opposition, who are trying to recover from the drubbing election.
The leading Ukrainian has endeavored to remember time and time again that what is on the table the table is peace. And human lives. This weekend, as a preview to the Paris meeting, he returned to visit the front line. The message your computer is usually clear and recurrent: “While we debate, there is a war in Europe in which people die”.
