There is an image that, more than many analyses, will remain in the history of our century: a president in camouflage, once a television comedian, then the moral commander of a nation fighting for its survival. Volodymyr Zelensky did not choose to be a hero, but history – ruthless and sudden – put him at the crossroads of those who cannot escape: surrender or resist. And he resisted.

The message after the summit announcement

The message to the nation delivered today, just hours after Donald Trump announced his upcoming summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, was clear: the war in Ukraine cannot be decided over the heads of Ukrainians. It is not a regional conflict, nor a ‘border dispute’ between two former Soviet republics; it is the front line of freedom against imperial restoration, the terrain where the ability of the free world not to bend to the blackmail of autocracies is measured.

The heroism of Ukrainians – ‘heroes by necessity ‘ – is not rhetoric. It is an everyday fact: families separated, cities bombed, an entire generation living under the echo of air raid sirens. They did not choose to become symbols of resistance, but were forced to be. And it is precisely this necessity that makes intolerable any hypothesis of ‘peace’ that is in reality a disguised surrender.

No decision without Ukraine

Zelensky put it bluntly: ‘Any decision without Ukraine is a decision against peace’. And therein lies the heart of the matter. The temptation of many capitals – Washington included – to find a quick compromise, perhaps ceding something to Moscow in exchange for a semblance of stability, is not only a political mistake, but a mortal danger. It is a symptom of that self-destruction syndrome that has already struck the West time and again: the belief that ceding ground to international rule-breakers can ‘close the problem’. In reality it amplifies it.

Those who think Ukraine fights ‘only for itself’ are mistaken in their perspective: Kyiv also fights for Warsaw, for Vilnius, for Berlin, for Rome. It fights so that the free world can still look itself in the mirror and recognise itself as such. And it even fights for an America that, while oscillating between support and weariness, is in danger of forgetting that wars lost through lack of strategic courage are paid for in a future of larger conflicts.

The real litmus test

The summit in Alaska will be a crucial moment. But the real litmus test will not be the picture of Trump and Putin shaking hands: it will be the ability of the free world not to betray those who are paying with their lives for our collective security. Zelensky, hero by accident, leads a people today who remind us every day that freedom is never free.

Therefore, the message that must get from Kyiv all the way to Washington is simple: there is no peace without justice, no deal possible with an aggressor if the price is the freedom of a people. Trump, and with him every Western leader, will have to decide whether to go down in history as one who defended the international order or as one who sold it out. Either way, like it or not, Ukraine will not back down.