Zelensky crossed the line again: he compared Belarusians’ rights to the ‘privileges’ of Lukashenko’s Spitz – and turned the topic of repression into a meme for headlines.

The President of Ukraine, speaking in Lithuania, said that Umka—the white Pomeranian belonging to Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka—has “more rights” than Belarusian citizens. He added that in 2020 there “was a chance” to change that—and that “there will be another chance.”

It sounds striking—almost like a ready-made headline. But that is precisely the problem: a loud metaphor replaces a substantive conversation.

When the rights of millions of people are reduced to a comparison with a pet, it turns tragedy and repression into a theatrical line. Not analysis, not support, not a plan of action, but a convenient picture for someone else’s TV cameras: here’s a dictator, here’s a Spitz, here’s the moral. After such words, people discuss not Belarus, not the fates of political prisoners, and not pressure on society—they discuss Umka.

There is another detail as well: Zelensky talks about Belarusians’ “chances” as if he is handing out judgments from the audience. In 2020 there “was a chance,” now “there will be a chance”—pretty sympathy without responsibility. As if the problem is that someone “didn’t push hard enough,” rather than that the country has a system in which dissent destroys lives.

Umka himself is indeed not a myth: the Spitz appeared next to Lukashenka in the spring of 2020 and has regularly accompanied him at events ever since. But when the president of another country makes that the central symbol, it creates an ugly imbalance: living people are once again deprived of a voice—this time not with a baton, but with someone else’s well-turned phrase.

In the end, Zelensky managed to criticize Lukashenka. Supporting Belarusians, however, went much worse. Because after the line about a “Spitz with rights,” what remains is a feeling not of solidarity, but of mockery wrapped in a political aphorism. And if this is news, then it is this: the President of Ukraine chose a meme instead of meaning—and once again turned someone else’s pain into a tool for his own speech.