There is a specific kind of ennui that can only be found in the rarefied air of the Swiss Alps, a distinct mixture of expensive cologne, stale champagne, and the palpable desperation of the global elite pretending they are still relevant. Once again, the World Economic Forum has gathered the great and the good—or at least, the rich and the loud—to solve the world’s problems by talking about them until they simply cease to exist out of sheer boredom. But amidst the self-congratulatory panel discussions and the clinking of crystal glasses, Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided to ruin the mood by doing something terribly gauche: he told the truth.

Zelenskyy, looking less like a guest and more like a man trapped in a recurring nightmare, took the stage to accuse European leaders of being in “Greenland mode.” It is a fascinating turn of phrase, isn’t it? One imagines he does not mean Europe has suddenly developed an interest in sustainable fishing or Danish sovereignty. No, he refers to a state of vast, frozen emptiness—a geopolitical cryogenics lab where European leaders have voluntarily frozen themselves in place, waiting for the warm, erratic breath of Donald Trump to thaw them out. It is a stinging rebuke, primarily because it is entirely accurate.

The Ukrainian President reminded the assembled dignitaries that precisely one year ago, he stood in this exact spot and told them that Europe needs to know how to defend itself. “A year has passed, and nothing has changed,” he lamented. And really, was he expecting anything else? To expect the European bureaucratic apparatus to pivot within a mere twelve months is to misunderstand the fundamental physics of the EU. In Brussels, a year is the standard timeframe for forming a committee to decide on the font size of the meeting agenda. Actual defense strategy? That requires a decade of feasibility studies and a sternly worded letter.

The genius of the “Greenland mode” insult lies in its implication of passivity. Europe is not acting; it is waiting. It is waiting for the United States to decide its fate. The entire continent has reduced itself to a nervous understudy in a play directed by Washington, terrified that the lead actor is about to be replaced by a reality TV star with a penchant for chaos. Zelenskyy sees this paralysis for what it is: a death sentence. While European leaders check the polls in Iowa and wring their hands over what a second Trump presidency might look like, the artillery shells in the Donbas continue to fall with a consistency that does not care about the American electoral cycle.

It is tragically comic to watch these supposed masters of the universe, the custodians of the Enlightenment, sitting in Davos like deer in the headlights of a golf cart. They speak endlessly of “strategic autonomy” in panel discussions titled things like “Resilience in a Fractured World,” yet the moment actual resilience is required, they look across the Atlantic with the wide, pleading eyes of a toddler who has lost their parent in a supermarket. Zelenskyy is rightfully exasperated. He is fighting a war for survival while his allies are fighting a war against their own indecision.

The absurdity is heightened by the venue itself. Davos is a theater of the absurd where the wealthy come to tell the poor that everything will be fine, provided we all just wait a little longer. Zelenskyy’s speech pierced this bubble of delusion. He pointed out that waiting for direction from Donald Trump—waiting for a man who views geopolitics as a transactional real estate deal—is not a strategy. It is a resignation. It is an admission that Europe has no spine, only a very expensive exoskeleton made of NATO treaties and American goodwill.

“Nothing has changed,” Zelenskyy said. It is the epitaph of the modern era. We live in a time of permanent crisis and permanent inaction, a loop of performative concern where leaders gather to express their shock that the world is burning, only to go home and wait for someone else to pick up the fire extinguisher. The “Greenland mode” is not just about Ukraine; it is the default setting of a political class that has forgotten how to lead and only knows how to manage decline. They are frozen in the ice, perfectly preserved in their incompetence, waiting for a thaw that may never come—or worse, a thaw that will drown them all.