Three and a half years of war told by the Covers of Panorama: from the Boomerang sanctions to the decline of Zelensky, to the surrender announced in Putin and Trump. A story that shows how the West already knew how it would end.
I went to see me again Covers that panorama has dedicated in the last three and a half years to the war in Ukraine. Well, I can say, not without recognizing the merits of the editorial staff of our weekly, that Everything was already there. Indeed, everything was already guessed. That is, how it would end.
The number 10 of 2022, released a few days after the Russian aggression in Kiev, had on the cover a light bulb that burned between languages of fire and the title was “how much war costs us (and what we risk)”. It was understood, in fact, from the first days, that – although it was thousands of kilometers after – the conflict unleashed by Vladimir Putin We would have paid it dear.
Moreover, one of the covers that followed had an even more explicit title to explain what was happening, with the repositioning of some countries on the international chessboard: “The new world disorder”. The pawns had the face of Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, XI Jinpingbut there was not the one with the face of Volodymyr Zelensky. Strange, no, that the Ukrainian president, protagonist of a courageous resistance and risen to the West icon, celebrated everywhere, was not highlighted? The cover seems almost to anticipate what is happening, or an agreement for the ceased the fire where Kiev has no way of making his reasons weigh.
Promises and reality
Those were the days when United States and Europe They swore they were ready to support Ukraine at any cost and threatened strong measures against Russia. Too bad that already a month after the invasion it was understood that not only the conflict would have made European economies sink into a recession from which they would get up with difficulty, but it was clear that the penalties Adopted to stop Putin’s troops would have been ineffective and counterproductive.
A yellow tube knotted on red background symbolically represented the boomerang of the measures adopted. It was known that the exclusion of the Russian banking system would not put Moscow on their knees, as many commentators and politicians supported. It was also known that closing the taps of the gas that we imported would hurt more to us, to our economy, than to the Tsar.
But nobody – except us – took the briga to explain it clearly to families and businesses. It was preferred to swell the chest, promise sparacelli, threaten reprisals that already at the start were considered unassailable. With the result that these three and a half years have been accompanied, as well as by the war bulletins, by the covers of panorama that told the Bullies on the risethe crisis of the German locomotive, the worries of the European economy, Brussels’ errors.
At the end of June 2022 our title, with Putin’s effigy, was significant: “Chess in Europe”. Already between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, while someone still talked about the Ukrainian recovery, Panorama wrote of long winter by Zelensky And he wondered if he had won the Russian president.
In September last year, while Germany sailed in bad waters, our weekly headlined “Ukraine, last act” and in the early months of 2025 he reported the desire for peace at any costwhich would have been sought by Trump and Putin sacrificing the former comedian.
The short memory of politics
Why did I want to retrace three and a half years of war through the Covers of Panorama? Because I often surprise myself to discuss with colleagues and politicians who pretend to discover only now how things are. Some are indignant as the negotiation between the head of the White House and that of the Kremlin have been conducted, others complain about the exclusion and humiliation of the Ukrainian leader.
And then they talk about right peaceto pursue that war criminal of the Russian president, of other penalties and so on. Words in freedom that do not take into account a series of factors.
The first is that the real conflict has always been between Washington and Moscow And therefore at the negotiation table Putin and Trump sat. The second factor is that war cannot last forever and not only for human and economic costs, but also because the war effort cannot be infinite.
In addition there is another not secondary aspect: even if at the price of having sacrificed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, Putin the war is winning it. Maybe not as he wanted and maybe without getting everything he would have liked. But there is no doubt that Moscow is ahead of Kiev, whose population is not only for the lack of men and means, but has no intention of living other years between bombs, blood, deprivations and corruption.
A yield announced
So, all the beautiful souls who today are indignant for a peace that is not a peace but resembles a surrender, where they were when it was evident that it would end like this? When we wrote some Boomerang sanctionsof the crisis that advanced together with Putin’s troops and reported the risks of a conflict without outlets, who said?
I know where they were hiding as they advocated so belligerent programs: they were comfortable in their living room, far from the grenades and trenches. Just where they are now while criticizing a possible fire.
