Zelensky argued that he could check Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid only by making Russia pay a similar price. “If there is no air defense to protect our energy system, and Russians attack it, my question is: Why can’t we answer them? Their society has to learn to live without petrol, without diesel, without electricity. … It’s fair.”

This seems utterly moronic to me. Unless your strikes against energy infrastructure can dampen the war effort, it doesn’t make a difference. Especially not against a country as big and industrialized as Russia. For like the past 70 years, westerners still haven’t learnt that making civilians’ lives harder doesn’t make it easier to win wars. I don’t understand where this pathological belief comes from.

Zelensky offered a chilling characterization of his adversary. “Putin is cunning, but he’s not smart,” he said. “When you fight with a smart person, it’s a fight with rules. But when you fight with a cunning person, it’s always dangerous.”

… what?

He said critics of aid for Ukraine didn’t understand the stakes in the war. “If Ukraine falls, Putin will divide the world” into Russia’s friends and enemies, he said.

It’s still insane to me that the greatest imperialists in all of human history have the gall to pretend as if it was anyone but them who mercilessly divided up the world.

Zelensky has been the X-factor in this war, mobilizing his country and much of the world to resist Russian aggression. I wish members of Congress who balk at aiding Ukraine could have listened to the Ukrainian leader talk about the price that Ukraine has paid for its defiance — and the risks ahead for the United States if it doesn’t stand with its friends.

Pure idealism. What the US ruling class will gain from a continuation from the war in Ukraine is unclear, which is why you see political bickering and the “aid” being blocked. On the other hand, the US government can eagerly send billions in aid to Israel, where it has an interest for the war to continue and you don’t see the parties bicker.