"To no one's surprise, Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest. The popular vote, if not the panel of judges, was always going to be swayed by the intense sympathy for the Ukrainian people while their nation is subjected to bombardment and outright war crimes by Russia.
I don't suppose the other national placings were similarly affected by such moral passions, but in this context there was still something symbolic in the fact that the British entry came second, while those of Germany and France were last and second last respectively.
For among those European nations, it is the UK which has been, from the start, the most outspoken in its support for the absolute right of the Ukrainian people to make no concession to Moscow's demands, and which was the first to supply the weaponry Kyiv needs to resist and repel the invader.
Futile
By contrast, Germany and France trusted President Putin's assurances that he would not invade, scorned British and U.S. intelligence assessments that he was lying, and then — when Russian troops duly did head for Kyiv — wrote off Ukraine's chances of mounting any resistance.
Perhaps it was in reference to this that Ukraine's special envoy on sanctions, Oleksii Makeiev, tweeted on the Eurovision result: 'It should have been yours, [Britain]. But you, Brits, are those Europeans who know what's right and what's wrong. Thank you!'
Also over the weekend, it was Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky himself who made the most stinging direct criticism of his French opposite number's continued futile attempts to pow-wow with Putin, to somehow cobble together a way for the Russian leader to exit without 'loss of face'.
In an interview with the Italian television channel Rai 1, Zelensky said: '[President] Macron does it in vain … Ukraine is not ready to sacrifice territory and sovereignty. This is a waste of time.'
A leader of an EU member state, Estonia, criticised Macron (though not by name) for the same reason over the weekend. That country's Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, remarked: 'If we want to get the message through that actually 'You are isolated', don't call [Putin]. There's no point. To me, it's the question: why talk to him? He's a war criminal.'
In fact, one of the most prominent presenters on Russia's main state broadcast channel, Rossiya 1, also ridiculed Macron's persistent telephoning of Putin. Vladimir Solovyov declared there to be a new political term, which he called 'to do a Macron', defining it as 'to ring up constantly for no reason'.
One of Solovyov's colleagues, on the same programme, argued that the only European country which had significant influence over Ukraine is … the UK. Against the backdrop of a giant picture of Boris Johnson, he railed: 'Today the British really are the masters of Ukraine. Right there in their pocket they've got Zelensky. It's bitter for me to recognise it.'...
As Andrei Kozyrev, the former Russian foreign minister (under Boris Yeltsin), observed even before the latest news of multiple military setbacks for Moscow: 'Vladimir Putin does not need to be led by hand out of this. He went into this war and he will find his way out, but only if he smells defeat.'
In other words: unplug your hotline to the Kremlin, Mr Macron."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10819315/DOMINIC-LAWSON-Time-unplug-Kremlin-hotline-Mr-Macron-making-laughing-stock.html
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