‘Superpower’ Director Sean Penn Blasts Liberals For Willingness To Sacrifice Ukraine For Peace: “An Idiot Show Of Politically Correct Morons”
Sean Penn and 'Superpower'AP Photo/Chris Pizzello/Paramount+
Sean Penn, director of the new Ukraine war documentary Superpower, does not hold back in an in-depth interview for Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast.
The two-time Oscar winner becomes emotional recalling what he witnessed inside the presidential palace in Ukraine on the very day Russia launched its brutal invasion of the country. Weaving through darkened passageways on his way to meet one on one with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Penn describes the “extreme courage” he saw as the Ukrainian leader tried to mount a defense against a nuclear-powered neighbor.
Penn goes after the right for failing to be outraged over Russia’s abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children. But he saves his sharpest criticism for the left, targeting those who call for peace talks with Russia that could jeopardize Ukraine’s freedom.
“How dare we talk about their negotiation?” he demands, asking Americans how they would feel if somebody seized New York “and your mother and father lived there and now you can negotiate it away for peace?”
He reacts to being called a Ukraine war hawk, and blasts liberals for a misplaced sense of compassion, labeling them an “idiot show of politically correct morons.”
But some of Penn’s most personal comments come as he evaluates where he developed his moral compass, a defining quality that has compelled him to speak out on any number of divisive political questions – and often earned him ridicule from the right wing (he’s been parodied in everything from songs to the movie Team America: World Police). He says it comes from witnessing corruption, not just in others, but in himself. ...
The West’s united pro-Ukraine front is showing cracks
Jen Kirbyjen.kirby@vox.com
12 - 15 minutes
Western unity around Ukraine is starting to strain as the conflict grinds on with largely static front lines, and as the politics in the United States and Europe become more volatile themselves.
For Ukraine, fighting a grinding counteroffensive and trying to shore up longer-term support against Russia,
this all looks a bit distressing. But the continuation of that ironclad
Western unity was never guaranteed — and in some ways wasn’t a
completely natural fit, especially in Europe, where politics, history,
and economics sometimes made it difficult to neatly sort countries into
pro-Russia or pro-West camps.
From both the US and Europe, support for Kyiv is still forthcoming, of course.But
it is not quite the all-in, unequivocal support that characterized the
first year of the war. In 2022, the shock of the Russian invasion, and
Ukraine’s initial success in repelling Russian forces from Kyiv, then laterliberating its territory,
sharpened the sense of purpose among Western countries, and tamped down
some of the competing political interests within them. They also eased
some of the tensions that have long complicated trans-Atlantic and
European relations.
This is still very far away from a rejection of Ukraine’s
cause. Together, these countries see Russia as a threat, and largely
believe their security and geopolitical interests align with helping
Ukraine.
✓✓ But economic and energy
pressures, political opportunism, and electoral politics are becoming
harder to overcome, especially as Ukraine’s counteroffensive remains
without a major breakthrough. At least for now, Western policies toward
Ukraine look set to stay much more fraught.
Slovakia is a “cold shower for Western unity” — but it’s also not time to freak out yet
In Slovakia, Robert Fico’s Smer-SD party won the most votes (a little more than 20 percent),
promising to focus more on cost-of-living issues like the economy and
energy, rather than on the Ukraine conflict. Fico promised to end
military aid — “not a single round” — to Ukraine.
“We are prepared to help with the reconstruction of the state, but you know our opinion on arming Ukraine,” Fico told reporters after the election. He also said he would seek to start peace talks.
Fico did not win outright, so he will need to form a coalition with other political parties if he seeks to lead, and that may ultimately force him to temper his pro-Russia, anti-EU stance.
But the election result, said Teona Lavrelashvili, policy
analyst at the European Policy Centre, “also indicates [the] starting
of a cold shower when it comes to Western unity towards Ukraine.”
Slovakia is an EU and NATO member, and its previous
government had been a strong supporter of its geographical neighbor,
Ukraine. It was one of the first countries to deliver fighter jets to Kyiv, and the country is hosting more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.
“Most Slovaks most likely made their decisions based on
the economic concerns, including [Fico’s] voters,” said Alena Kudzko,
vice president for policy and programming at GLOBSEC, a think tank in
Bratislava. “But definitely this convenient explanation that [Fico]
offered — meaning that if only we can stop the war in Ukraine, the
situation in Slovakia will get better, and by the way, that is better
for Ukrainians; they will stop dying — that definitely fell on
propitious grounds in Slovakia.”
Fico has been viewed as a potential ally for Viktor Orban,
the right-wing Hungarian leader who’s also sympathetic to Putin and has
pushed back against the EU’s positions, including on Russia. European
decision-making runs on consensus, so the more oppositional voices, the
more complicated the politics will be.
But as experts pointed out, Fico is, above all else, a
pragmatist. He served as Slovakia’s prime minister from 2006 to 2010,
and from 2012 to 2018, before being forced to resign amid a scandal over a murdered journalist. In the past, he balanced Slovakia’s relationships with the EU and Russia.
That was a lot easier to do before Russia’s full-scale
invasion, but it also means Fico is unlikely to go all in for Vladimir
Putin. Slovakia, a country of about 5.5 million people, is deeply
intertwined with the EU, and is dependent on the EU for its economy, its
politics, and its security. “I think you can do slogans for
billboards,” said Pavol Demeš, a visiting distinguished fellow at the
German Marshall Fund and former Slovakian foreign ministry official.
“But in real life, things are intertwined.”
Welcome to the new normal for Ukraine aid
Fico has promised no new military aid to Ukraine, but as
experts point out, this doesn’t really mean much, since Slovakia pretty
much delivered to Ukraine all it has to give. This is true for Poland,
too, whose leaders said recently that Warsaw would cease sending weapons to Ukraine until it resolved a dispute over the transport of Ukrainian grain, which leaders say is hurting Polish farmers.
✓ These promises, however, are an easy rhetorical flex when
trying to win over skeptical voters, or prove you’re looking out for
constituents’ economic interests.
The war in Ukraine did have economic fallout on the
continent, and inflation and high energy prices are squeezing voters.
That’s true elsewhere in Europe, where populist, far-right, and more
pro-Russia parties are gaining ground,
including in places like Germany. What is happening in Slovakia and
Poland is likely a harbinger for more difficult politics to come.
“The Ukraine fatigue will be visible across the board in
Europe,” Kudzko said. “Again, it does not mean that it’s not
overcomable, or that it encapsulates in the majority of the population.
But of course, after years of economic duress — which, by the way,
started all the way back during Covid — the population comes to a
certain level of fatigue.”
Congress averted a shutdown this weekend, passing a continuing resolution to continue funding the government — at least for the next 45 days,
so lawmakers can once again engage in this showdown before the end of
the year. But most notably, $6 billion in Ukraine aid was left out of
this stopgap measure, leaving a question mark again as to whether the US
will provide additional assistance for Ukraine this year.
That $6 billion was already a scaled-back version from
the administration’s request for about $24 billion, and the omission of
the aid package comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Washington and Capitol Hill in person to lobby for aid.
President Joe Biden
is urging Congress to pass this Ukraine aid, and it does have
bipartisan support. But the political jockeying over Ukraine aid is a
symptom of the US’s broader political dysfunction, which is probably not
reassuring to Ukraine, or any of its European allies, either.
✓ And American support for Ukraine might get even more
complicated. Ukraine skepticism is growing amid Republicans, including
voters. The GOP frontrunner Donald Trump is chief among them.
This strain in the GOP, then, is probably not going away, and may morph
beyond battles over Ukraine funding into fundamentally questioning the
US’s position on Ukraine.
Questioning aid for Ukraine — especially the utility, and
the escalatory potential of weapons assistance — is justified, here in
the US and in Europe. But in the past year, Ukraine’s supporters could
more easily make the case for it: Ukraine was winning, defying the odds
even, and Russia’s military was in complete disarray. The Western
strategy looked like it was working.
This year has tested that. The war is not quite static,
but Kyiv’s counteroffensive has failed to make substantial gains. While
Ukraine has had success, selling a slow, expensive grind to the public
is a lot harder than selling stunning military victories. And while
governments tried to mitigate the pain the war created for their populations, that is harder to do the longer the fallout continues.
This is especially true in Europe, with war on the continent. Europe’s support is robust, but when it comes to weapons, EU arsenals can’t make up the shortfall
if America drops out. And if overall American assistance lags, it’s not
clear the EU can make up that shortfall — or if they will be able to
make the political case to the public that they should.
That case is also getting harder to make in the US — to
say nothing of the rest of the world, parts of which have been far more
skeptical of the Western narratives around the Ukraine war. It comes at a
precarious moment for Ukraine, which relies on this outside aid for
assistance, and it is a boon for Vladimir Putin, who always has sought
to exploit the cracks in Western unity and is likely looking to target US political divisions
for Moscow’s benefit. These developments were not unpredicted — but
what is, at least right now, is how they will influence the war still
raging in Ukraine.
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Ukraine: Orban Wants to Hold Back Some Aid
Jorge Valero
1 minute
Hungary
proposed splitting a €50 billion ($52.4 billion) European Union package
for Ukraine, adding to concern that economic support for Kyiv may
falter after the US dropped fresh money for the war-torn nation in a
stop-gap spending package.
Hungary told
member states last week that €25 billion would be sufficient for
Ukraine at this stage, people familiar with the matter said. The EU
should evaluate the contribution halfway through the 2024-2027
disbursement period, when another €25 billion could be provided,
depending on Ukraine’s needs, the people added.
24 hours ago · ... Ukrainian grain imports. Poland did, however, walk back threats to stop weapons deliveries to Ukraine over the argument. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ...
13 hours ago · ... Ukraine, and looks set to team up with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbàn to oppose further European support for Kyiv. Poland, once the most dependable ...
16 hours ago · On Sunday, President Biden urged Congress to stop “playing games” with Ukraine's aid requests. ... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, back in Kyiv after an ...
2 hours ago · A populist party that wants to stop military aid to Ukraine and is critical of the Chairman of Smer-Social Democracy party, Robert Fico, in Bratislava ...
1 hour ago · Last weekend, in the US, Congress avoided a government shutdown, but only after it dropped billions in Ukraine aid from its short-term spending bill. Now, ...
22 hours ago · Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has ... Some countries in the Global South have also cooled on efforts by countries like the US to rally support for Ukraine ...
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