Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at the Munich Security Conference, held from February 14 to 16, dressed head to toe in black. It was a notable change from the khaki T-shirt that has been the uniform of Kyiv's "Resistance fighter" since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the president chose to stay in the capital. The Ukrainian press and geopolitical experts noted the other symbol of the Munich conference. "When you start to settle the fate of a country without the presence of that country and without having consulted it, it's called the Munich Conference, 1938 version," said international relations expert François Heisbourg. That year, agreements were signed that allowed Nazi Germany to annex German-populated territories in then-Czechoslovakia, setting the stage for the Second World War.
"It's really not very pleasant," Zelensky had said the day before, commenting on the diplomatic disaster triggered by the 90-minute phone call made on February 12 by the American president, Donald Trump, to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, prior to any contact with Ukraine. This underplaying of the situation was quickly abandoned in front of an American audience on NBC this weekend, who Zelensky told: "Ukraine has little chance of surviving without the support of the United States."
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