This story is pretty amazing. Zelensky personally turned the tide on the serious sanctions with a personal appeal that left the leaders of Europe in tears:
As the leaders of the European Union gathered for an emergency summit on Thursday night, momentum was already moving toward imposing tough new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
But a handful of key leaders — notably including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — were reluctant to proceed with some of the harshest proposals. Scholz told reporters on the way into the meeting in Brussels that he wanted to focus on implementing sanctions that had already been approved before enacting new ones.
After a perfunctory debate, the presidents and prime ministers quickly approved sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and some of Russia’s biggest banks. Talk of barring Russia from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, however, stalled amid skepticism on the part of Scholz and the leaders of Austria, Italy and Cyprus, according to officials familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.
Then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dialed into the meeting via teleconference with a bracing appeal that left some of the world-weary politicians with watery eyes. In just five minutes, Zelensky — speaking from the battlefield of Kyiv — pleaded with European leaders for an honest assessment of his country’s ambition to join the E.U. and for genuine help in its fight with the Russian invaders. Food, ammunition, fuel, sanctions — Ukraine needed its European neighbors to step up with all of it.
[…]
“It was extremely, extremely emotional,” said a European official briefed on the call. “He was essentially saying: ‘Look, we are here dying for European ideals.”
Before disconnecting the video call, Zelensky told the gathering matter-of-factly that it might be the last time they saw him alive, according to a senior E.U. official who was present.
Just that quickly, the Ukrainian president’s personal appeal overwhelmed European leaders’ resistance to imposing measures that could drive the Russian economy into a state of near collapse. The result has been a rapid-fire series of developments boosting Ukraine’s fight to hold off the Russian military and shattering long-standing limits on European assertiveness in national security affairs.
The actions culminated on Saturday, when the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union announced they would bar several major Russian banks from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, crack down on Russian oligarchs, and prevent the Russian central bank from bailing out the domestic economy. The unprecedented movesled Russians to crowd ATMs in a desperate bid to withdraw cash and sparked a furious response from Putin, who called them “illegitimate” and ordered his nuclear forces to a higher state of alert.
Surprised by the unusually rapid European decision, the White House scrambled over the weekend to catch up in drafting its own related measures, according to one American and one European official.The latest sanctions mean the Western allies are effectively waging financial war against Russia, matching Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine with attacks on the foundation of a $1.5 trillion economy.
We’ve become very cynical about politics, both domestically and internationally. It’s understandable. But this shows that there is still a bit of idealism and inspiration left in our sclerotic world order. It needs change, but not at the barrel of a gun.