The Kramatorsk Diaries part 31

In The Court of the Wronged King...

Paul Conroy - Kyiv

Kash Patel is not so much a man rejecting the evidence of his eyes as a man whose body is ejecting them after receiving a well-aimed taser to the testes. Usually, one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover — but here, it’s mandatory. The cover in question adorns Patel’s Magnum Opus, The Plot Against The King: a thinly veiled MAGA screed masquerading as a children’s book. To see it is to feel, almost instinctively, that Patel has earned another crackling jolt below the belt.

The illustration is a goddamn fever dream — a gaudy carnival of MAGA übermensch and imagined conspirators, clustered around a fawningly well-thatched King Donald, gazing at him like hopped-up parishioners in the Church of Perpetual Grift. All except for Wizard Kash, who, even in his own fairy tale, appears to battle ongoing ophthalmic issues.

After years of buffing the royal orb, the young wizard has grown into a wealthy, powerful courtier — now head of the FBI. His deputy? The aptly named Dan Bongino, a man born for the role of assistant wizard.

Make no mistake, it’s a powerful post, and Patel wastes no time in abusing it. Acting under King Donald’s orders, he greenlights the search of Ambassador John Bolton’s home — the first of many anticipated acts of revenge on Trump’s perceived enemies. Bolton, hardly a hero by any stretch, has nonetheless been a vocal critic of Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin.

Bolton was blunt after Helsinki — the summit where Trump, flanked by Russian flags, sided with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment of Russian election interference. In The Room Where It Happened, he wrote that Trump looked "weak and obsequious." Not the kind of insight that gets you invited back to the court of the wronged king.

So, cue Patel, robed in Brooks Brothers’ finest hand-stitched garbs, brewing a fresh potion of chicken bones and lark’s vomit in his Hoover Building den, while FBI goons kick in Bolton’s door with their size twelves.

Meanwhile, back in Ukraine, the real world buzzes with drone alerts, ballistic missiles, and the overwhelming stench of diplomatic bullshit. Statements, tweets, press releases, counter-tweets, official denials, unconfirmed leaks — a cacophony of political ejaculate chokes the airwaves.

European leaders scramble for dignity in the wake of Washington’s recent clown show. They peddle still vague notions of "security guarantees" while Putin, with his trademark sneer, warns that NATO boots will not be tolerated on Ukrainian soil. Cue more huddling, more nervous glances, more hollow pressers.

A Putin-Zelensky bilateral becomes a trilateral. Why stop there? May as well go all in with a foursome. Putin is in his element, watching the West flail around Trump's unravelling psyche. He doesn't see chaos; he sees opportunity. The madman in the mirror.

Back in Kash Land, Trump brandishes a photo of himself with Putin in Alaska. "He looks good. Better than me," Trump mutters, beaming in his oversized MAGA hat and too-long red tie. Watching from Kyiv, I wonder if perhaps I smoked too much DMT in my twenties.

More statements. Less clarity. The carousel spins faster. The calliope music turns nightmarish. Everyone says something, yet no one says anything at all. Diplomacy has become a Rorschach test printed in disappearing ink.

Then the texts arrive: "Congrats on pissing off Russia." The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announces sanctions against 21 individuals. I’m number eleven. Somehow, I feel I’ve made it. Not sure where, but somewhere. I go to bed glowing, pondering the future of my steel exports to the US, the looming necessity of a ghost fleet and how this might affect my booming semiconductor empire.

The next morning, Tom from the Foreign Office calls. Jolly guy. Informs me I’m sanctioned. Warns me not to visit Russia or Belarus. Tells me to keep up the good work. I’m already banned from the U.S., so what’s another country?

Next week I’m heading to Donbas. At this moment, Trump and Putin are pressuring Ukraine to surrender it. I used to live in Kramatorsk, one of the last free cities in Donetsk. It’s not just a headline or a battlefield. It’s families, homes, lives. The so-called negotiations want to sacrifice them for a hollow photo-op and a stab at a Nobel Prize.

Don’t be fooled by the jargon. This isn’t statecraft. It’s a WWE promo with nuclear stakes. Trump bellows about "deals," Putin smirks knowingly, and NATO clutches its pearls like a vicar who’s just walked in on an orgy.

Trump doesn’t see a threat. He sees a role model — a mirror held up by a KGB showman whispering, ‘Yes, you too can be forever king if you just torch the rulebook’. And Trump believes it.