It’s a golden rule of politics that national leaders do not interfere in other countries’ elections. Tell that to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who jumped into the middle of America’s presidential campaign last week with both feet, wearing size 10 combat boots. The resulting, resounding thud could be heard as far away as Kyiv (which was perhaps the point).

Visiting an ammunition factory in pivotal Pennsylvania, Ukraine’s war-weary president told Republican nominee Donald Trump that, when it came to his appeaser’s policy of cutting off arms supplies and accepting peace on Vladimir Putin’s terms, he was talking out of his posterior. And Trump’s oddball running mate, JD Vance, was just plain “dangerous”, he said.

Zelenskyy’s blunt comments, and his warm embrace of Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s governor and close ally of Trump’s Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, had Republicans spitting blood. House speaker Mike Johnson denounced the visit as a “partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats”.

Trump’s mouthy son Donald Trump Jr was also outraged by the popular Zelenskyy’s coruscating intervention. “A foreign leader who has received billions of dollars in funding from American taxpayers comes to our country and has the nerve to attack the GOP ticket for president? Disgraceful!” he fumed.

Entertaining though all this is, it illustrates a wider, problematic modern phenomenon. In an inescapably inter-connected world, to twist a well-known phrase, all politics is global. Ukraine’s war matters in the US election. Many Ukrainian and Polish-Americans live in too-close-to-call Pennsylvania. Their votes could decide who wins the state and thus the White........

© The Guardian