Why I cannot forgive Zelenskyy for prioritizing living prisoners over a truly cinematic strike on Red Square

I was sitting in the Acela quiet car, returning from a particularly invigorating panel on kinetic theater at the Aspen Institute, when the news crossed my feed. A three-day ceasefire had been brokered between Russia and Ukraine. The pause in hostilities was timed precisely to coincide with Moscow’s annual Victory Day parade. As a geopolitical analyst with two bestselling books on the aesthetics of global conflict and a regular Sunday morning television slot to maintain, I felt a deep, personal sting of betrayal.

For weeks, the commentariat class in Washington, London, and Brussels had been salivating over the strategic and symbolic possibilities of this specific week. We had drawn up the maps. We had prepared the chyrons. We had booked the satellite time. The Victory Day parade in Red Square, with its meticulously choreographed columns of Russian armor and deeply insecure displays of militaristic pageantry, presented the ultimate narrative set-piece. A well-placed, entirely symbolic drone strike during the festivities would have provided the kind of breathtaking television that sustains the transatlantic think tank ecosystem for months.

Instead, Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to a ceasefire. When asked to explain this baffling refusal to entertain his international audience, the Ukrainian president offered a justification so pedestrian it bordered on the offensive. He stated, on the record, that Red Square is less important to us than the lives of Ukrainian prisoners who can be brought home.

I had to read the quote three times to ensure it had not been mistranslated. It is difficult to express the profound disappointment of watching a wartime leader abandon the grand chessboard of history to focus on something as provincial as human lives. Has he learned nothing from his time in the spotlight? Wars are not won merely by reclaiming territory or securing the survival of your citizenry. They are won by providing the international community with compelling, high-definition moments of symbolic triumph that we can dissect on podcasts sponsored by defense contractors.

To understand the depth of this missed opportunity, one must look at the sheer production value of the Victory Day parade. The Kremlin goes to immense trouble to roll out its surviving military hardware. The lighting in Red Square is historically quite dramatic. A Ukrainian intervention during this parade would have been a masterstroke of optical dominance. It would have dominated the news cycle, shifted the paradigm, and most importantly, given me something to talk about during my scheduled appearance on Face the Nation. Now, I will presumably have to field questions about the logistics of prisoner exchanges, a topic so devoid of cinematic flair that it practically begs the viewer to change the channel.

I was discussing this very frustration over a three-martini lunch at Cafe Milano with several undersecretaries of defense and a few prominent lobbyists, and the consensus was unanimous. We feel let down. We have invested billions of dollars and countless hours of rhetoric into elevating Zelenskyy to the status of a global protagonist. In return, we expect a certain level of narrative discipline. Choosing to retrieve living, breathing prisoners of war instead of bombing a parade is the kind of pragmatic, localized decision-making that entirely ignores the needs of the Washington media apparatus.

Sadly, this lack of respect for the geopolitical spectacle seems to be a growing trend across Eastern Europe. Just look at the situation unfolding in Hungary this weekend. For sixteen years, Viktor Orbán has provided us with a reliable, delightfully cartoonish authoritarian villain. His reign has been a goldmine for breathless editorializing about the collapse of democratic norms. And how does his era end? With a formal, solemn swearing-in of a new leader, Péter Magyar, inside Hungary’s dazzling neo-Gothic parliament.

I tuned in expecting a dramatic clash of civilizations, a constitutional crisis, perhaps a dramatic standoff on the banks of the Danube. Instead, I was forced to watch a peaceful transition of power. Outside the parliament, the party is expected to unfold as people pour in from across the country to mark the pivotal moment. A party. A joyous, bloodless gathering of citizens celebrating a democratic transition. It is absolutely nauseating. Where is the friction? Where is the chaos? How am I supposed to secure a six-figure book advance to write about the twilight of European democracy if these nations insist on resolving their political differences with solemn ceremonies and street festivals?

Between the peaceful transition in Budapest and the ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine, it has become painfully clear that the leaders of these nations are acting entirely out of self-interest. They are making decisions based on what is best for their own people, their own stability, and their own prisoners of war, with zero regard for the content needs of the American punditry.

It is a selfish way to conduct international affairs. When Zelenskyy chose to bring his people home rather than authorize a cinematic strike on Red Square, he may have saved hundreds of Ukrainian families from unimaginable grief, but he also left a gaping hole in Sunday morning programming. The interactive touch-screen map boards in newsrooms across Manhattan are sitting dark today. The graphic designers who spent all week rendering 3D models of the Kremlin’s airspace have nothing to show for their labor.

History will not remember the prisoners who returned home quietly during a three-day pause in fighting. History remembers the fireworks. History remembers the audacious, reckless decisions that look great in a documentary montage. If Zelenskyy wants to retain the support of the people who matter most—the men and women who write syndicated columns from the comfort of their home offices in Bethesda—he needs to remember that we are not here to watch a humanitarian rescue mission. We are here for the show.