As President Volodymyr Zelensky prepares to receive Washington’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, in Kyiv this weekend, he does so out of stark diplomatic necessity. As the leader of a nation fighting an existential war, Zelensky has no choice but to keep an open channel to the current US administration, regardless of who sits across the table.
But make no mistake: While official protocol demands a polite handshake at the presidential palace, the Ukrainian public and their allies across Europe owe these visitors no pretense of warmth.
The envoys finally arrive in Kyiv only after pilgrimages to Moscow – and only after routing this very trip through Russia first. Their track record reflects a worldview that treats a nation’s battle for survival as a transactional real estate deal.
The rhetoric framing these missions has systematically avoided naming the root cause of Ukraine’s suffering: Vladimir Putin and Russia’s naked imperial aggression. Instead, Washington’s approach has framed Russia’s unprovoked war not as a moral outrage or an international crime, but as a minor inconvenience to be settled via mineral rights, backroom concessions, and financial fallout for an inner circle.
The truth must be spoken plainly to these emissaries: You are not welcome here unless you are bringing something that rehabilitates you and your boss. Not only in the eyes of Ukrainians, but Europeans, the free world, and the many Americans who have been disgusted with your prevarication and cynical business-above-all-else approach.
Kyiv is not a trading floor, and the liberty of millions of Ukrainians is not a commodity to be bartered away after consulting the Kremlin’s preferences. If this visit is merely another exercise in fence-sitting, procrastination, or a venture to see what commercial scrap can be carved out of Ukraine’s sacrifice, or what leverage can be applied to force its capitulation – then save the jet fuel.
We will judge this delegation solely on concrete policy outcomes, not performative diplomacy:
- Unlocking Sanctions: Immediate movement to release the stalled sanctions packages championed by the US Senate and Congress.
- Critical Air Defenses: Firm, immediate commitments for the supply of Patriot missile batteries to protect the very skies our guests will sit beneath.
- A Strategic Pivot: An explicit end to transactional neutrality and a real commitment to supporting Ukrainian sovereignty rather than facilitating Russian demands.
- Putting international law and the UN Charter before “transactional” priorities that undermine the very principles and values that the US was so adamant on observing and on which the post-World Ware II order was built.
President Zelensky will fulfill his duty to engage. But the mood in Kyiv is unequivocal: We all know the games that have been played, and we know whose interests have been prioritized.
Bring real support that guarantees Ukraine’s survival and victory, or understand that your presence here offers nothing of value and that you should be ashamed, not content, by allowing Russia to continue its deadly onslaught against Ukraine and the free world while you smugly engage in self-serving connivance.
Prove us wrong!