Michael Andersen: Blinken plays guitar in Kyiv – but we are the ones being played

The U.S. secretary of state played "Rockin' in the free world" in Kyiv as "Back in the USSR" encroaches on Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, partly because Western military aid is too late.

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

Antony Blinken really should have played “I can’t get no satisfaction” (and ad-libbed “…because of Donald Trump”) – or at least added it to his set - because the whole point of his trip was to show U.S. support to Ukraine – to make amends for the extreme dithering on U.S. military aid to the country. Over the last several months, as Russia has made advances on the battlefield, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as his ministers, have been anything but subtle, repeatedly declaring that Western delays in arms delivery have cost Ukrainian lives. As we speak, the Russians are making extremely worrying military progress towards Kharkiv.

Politicians and image makers call them “photo ops.” But they are not “photo opportunities” that arise on their own. They are carefully stage-managed and planned, of course, sometimes to put or keep focus on something: In Kyiv, for example, Blinken also shared a pizza, or at least a pizza photo op, with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba. The pizza was backed by a restaurant chain run for and by Ukrainian veterans to support them in their return to civilian life. Great. (And I can vouch that their pizzas are delicious).

But photo ops are as often employed to divert focus away from politics. And Blinken had the embarrassing - deeply disrespectful - debacle in the U.S. about the $61 billion (mainly) military aid package to Ukraine to divert attention away from. After being blocked for six months in the U.S. Congress, the package finally went through last month. But not before many Ukrainian soldiers had been killed unnecessarily, according to their president.

(Antony Blinken in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 2024, photo: NBC)

In a piece with the headline “Antony Blinken’s rock performance in Kyiv bar divides opinion in Ukraine,” the Guardian quotes messages from Ukrainians on social media: “Kharkiv region is being wiped from the Earth, people are leaving their homes… and a U.S. top official is singing songs in a Kyiv bar,” and “so many people die every day because we don’t have enough weapons and enough support from our allies … Such concerts are simply tactless and inappropriate,” wrote a Ukrainian veteran who lost both his legs in combat, “I advise the secretary of state to visit a military cemetery not a bar.”

The weapons delay was not of his making, but Blinken—and his boss, of course—are the faces of the U.S. in the world. “The buck stops here,” said the sign on President Harry S Truman's desk.

Blinken is not the first U.S. or Western leader to employ a photo op and prop abroad. Obviously. I will give you just one example, one that may be almost too close to home for Ukrainians in 2024. U.S. President Bill Clinton came to Prague 30 years ago and played the saxophone in a jazz club. Sure, Clinton played the sax while Blinken played the guitar, but the tune was the same. It’s one called “I am trying to shift the media’s focus.” Clinton and his advisers were trying to divert focus away from the fact that he came to bring bad news to the Czechs (and other Central Europeans who only five years earlier had kicked out the Soviet occupation armies) — namely that their wish to join NATO had been postponed, despite much rhetorical support from Western leaders. Does that sound familiar?

(U.S. President Bill Clinton in Prague 1994, photo: Jazzineuropa)

Like Clinton on NATO expansion, Blinken personally had wanted to move faster and further on aid to Ukraine but was held up by Trump and Republicans. Blinken came to reassure the Ukrainians about U.S. support. This was badly needed after the Ukrainians had been waiting so long for the $61 billion weapons package Blinken’s boss had promised them. The package was only finally voted through Congress last month, and deliveries have, according to the Department of Defence, already started to arrive in Ukraine. But the optics of American politicians squabbling for months - with some openly trying to block aid for Ukraine - were in serious need of repair.

Blinken isn’t the only one. As soon as Western politicians understood just how strong the support for Ukraine was among the populations of Western Europe, there has been a never-ending stream of them visiting Kyiv, seeking out photo ops with the man of the hour, Zelensky, he of combat gear and “I do not need a ride, I need ammo” fame.

One of the first was the unkempt then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “BoJo” was undoubtedly, and before most, a supporter of Ukraine (as he previously had been keen on Russia, btw) – but he was also not blind to the fact that he was about to be kicked out of office at home, so maybe a “man of action” photo op in Kyiv could help. (It did not; having partied and broken the law during the COVID lockdown made Johnson politically toxic, and his party sacrificed him to stay in power.)

The list of Western politicians on a PR pilgrimage to Kyiv is long. People who, on February 23, 2022, one day before the Russian invasion, might have had trouble pointing to Ukraine on a map were now queuing up to get their political gold dust snap with the brave Ukrainian president. There are too many to mention.

But as a Dane and long-term Ukraine supporter, I must dwell on the photo op carefully constructed by the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen—possibly the strongest and most unapologetic supporter of Ukraine among Western leaders. She and her team are known for being very apt at PR. So when Zelensky visited Denmark in August 2023, the Danish PM proudly showed him some of the 19 Danish F16s she had promised to donate to Ukraine. In front of the Danish and international media, Zelensky called this gift “historic, the most important support yet for Ukraine,” and the two posed, and that is the right word - posed, in what the Danish media immediately dubbed ‘The Top Gun photo.” See for yourself.

(President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, August 2023, photo: Agence France-Presse)

At the time, Frederiksen was one of the names mentioned as the next secretary general of NATO. She was unpopular at home, and several Danish commentators mentioned a feeling of queasiness over the ‘Top Gun” photo. “Zelensky and Frederiksen are laughing and smiling while sitting in a machine that will go and kill people. It gives me a bad taste in my mouth,” one wrote.

The Danish PM promised that most planes would be in Ukraine by Christmas. However, since the euphoric photo op, the delivery of the Danish F16s has been delayed several times without much explanation. This week, quietly, it was announced that the Danish F16s would now arrive in Ukraine “within several months.” That will make it 12 months after they were promised to Ukraine.

Why do these photo ops get my goat? More and more, the photo ops of our politicians when coming to Kyiv are either self-serving or props to hide that we are late, terribly late, with our help to Ukraine. Like in Blinken’s case.

Blinken was not to blame personally for the delay of the package, of course, but maybe he should have spent his time in Kyiv explaining the gaming in Congress that cost so many Ukrainian lives instead of playing guitar.

Do our politician and their spin doctors think that we are stupid enough to fall for the guitar, sax and F16 pics and forget the harsh political realities? Well, it turns out that they are not wrong, are they? We are all talking about Blinken and his damned guitar.