Who is really suffering from this conflict? We are, said the US president, in a move straight from the populist playbook
During a dramatic Oval Office meeting last Friday, US president Donald Trump confronted Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a move that upended the long-established narrative of Russia as the aggressor and Ukraine as the victim.
In the conversation, which quickly escalated into a tense exchange, Trump accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war with Russia by refusing to engage in peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin. His rhetoric suggested that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for escalating the conflict and that the US had unfairly borne the burden of Ukraine’s resistance. Trump constructed a new hierarchy of suffering, one in which the US emerged as the primary victim, Ukraine as the source of its burdens and Russia as innocent of blame.
Lilie Chouliaraki is professor of media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the author of Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood
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