When the US picks clients, vassals, and proxies, it needs men or women ready to trade in the interests, even the welfare and lives of their compatriots. Vladimir Zelenskyyy is such a man. A look at the elites of EU-NATO Europe shows he is not alone. But he is an especially extreme case.
It is much less than a decade ago that the former media entrepreneur and comedian – often crude instead of witty – advanced from being a pet protégé of one of Ukraine’s most corrupt oligarchs to capturing the country’s presidency. As it turned out, never to let go of it: Zelenskyy has used the war, which was provoked by the West and escalated in February 2022, not only to make himself an indispensable if very expensive and often obstreperous American puppet but also as a pretext to evade elections.
And yet, now signs are multiplying that his days of being indispensable may be over. For one thing, Seymour Hersh, living legend of American investigative journalism, is reporting that Zelenskyy is very unpopular where it matters most, in US President Donald Trump’s White House. This is not surprising: Trump’s recent turn against Russia – whatever its real substance or marital reasons – does not mean a turn in favour of Ukraine and even less so in favour of Zelenskyy, as attentive observers have noted. According to the Financial Times, “Western allies of Ukraine” still believe that Trump keeps seeing Russian President Vladimir Putin “as his main negotiating partner and Zelenskyy as the primary obstacle to a workable peace deal.”
And according to “knowledgeable officials in Washington” who have talked to Hersh, the US leadership is ready to act on that problem by getting rid of Zelenskyy. And urgently: Some American officials consider removing the Ukrainian president “feet first” in case he refuses to go. Their reason, according to Hersh’s confidants, is to make room for a deal with Russia.
Another, also plausible, possibility is that Zelenskyy will be discarded to facilitate not ending, but continuing the war, so as to keep draining Russian resources. In this scenario, the US would prolong the war by handing it over to its loyally self-harming European vassals. After that, that is, seeing to the installation of a new leader in Kiev, one it has under even better control than Zelenskyy.
Meanwhile, as if on cue, Western mainstream media have started to notice the obvious: The Financial Times has found out that critics accuse Zelenskyy of an “authoritarian slide,” which is still putting it very mildly but closer to the truth than past daft hero worship. The Spectator – in fairness, a magazine with a tradition of being somewhat more realistic about Ukraine – has fired a broadside under the title “Ukraine has lost faith in Zelenskyy.” The Economist has detected an “outrage” in Zelenskyy’s moves and, more tellingly, used a picture of him making him look like a cross between a Bond villain and Saddam Hussein. Even Deutsche Welle, a German state propaganda outlet, is now reporting on massive human rights infringements under Zelenskyy, with the impaired systematically targeted for forced mobilisation.
Full disclosure: Knowing Ukrainian and Russian – Ukraine’s two languages – well and having written about the realities of Zelenskyy’s misrule for years already, my immediate response to these sudden revelations is “what took you so long?” My first articles explaining Zelenskyy’s obvious authoritarian tendencies – and practices, too – date back to 2021, and I have repeatedly pointed out that his popularity was slipping. All it took was to pay attention to Ukrainian polling.
But then, I know the reason for the mainstream’s delay: The bias induced by Western information warfare and media career conformism, which only weakens a little – or is redirected – when the geopolitics of the powerful change. In that sense, the increasingly sharp public criticism of Zelenskyy is yet another sign that he has fallen – and remains – out of favour with the American leadership that rules the West.
Indeed, it is when Zelenskyy escalated his attacks on the latter that the Financial Times woke up from years of sweet slumber to discover there’s something authoritarian about the West’s top man in Ukraine. By now, things have only gotten worse: The domestic intelligence – and, of course, repression – service SBU has raided key anti-corruption organisations and made arrests.
Simultaneously, Zelenskyy’s absolutely obedient majority in the Ukrainian parliament has passed a law to completely neuter these institutions by putting them under the president’s control, which the president then signed rapidly.
For the Ukrainian news site Strana.ua – a media rarity, as it has managed to resist the Zelenskyy regime’s aggressive attempts to subdue and streamline it – the SBU raids on the anti-corruption agencies alone were a power play, designed to consolidate Zelenskyy’s one-man rule. That is correct, and he wasn’t even done.
At the same time, it is, obviously, also very convenient to remove the last feeble restraints on Ukraine’s fabulously pervasive graft, since whatever the West – that is, the Europeans – will now spend on Ukraine will be misappropriated even more wildly than before. That could come in handy, especially if there should be a need to stay rich in exile.
Taken together, Zelenskyy’s government reshuffle and his assault on the anti-corruption agencies seem to reflect a double strategy: On one side, the endangered puppet is signalling submission to the US in at least some of his recent personnel moves, but on the other, he is also consolidating his power at home by insulating it from too much direct American influence. It is as if he were sending a message to Washington: “I really am your man. But if you try to choose another, I’ll fight.”
The historic irony is that, with Zelenskyy succeeding in finally razing the last pitiful remnants of pluralism in Ukraine, he – the once hysterically idolised darling of the “value-based” West – will be the president achieving a complete authoritarianism like no Ukrainian leader before him. And all that while propped up with hundreds of billions from the West.
Any displays of surprise or shock by Ukrainian and Western politicians or mainstream media betray either that they have been dozing under a rock for years or that they are being disingenuous. Because today’s Zelenskyy is not “turning” to authoritarianism. On the contrary, authoritarianism has always been his default disposition and his aim. Zelenskyy has been working on his personal ascent to unchecked power – and, of course, its material spoils as well – since he became Ukraine’s president.
By 2021, Zelenskyy had already engaged in all of the following: vicious lawfare against Ukraine’s opposition and his personal political rivals, such as former president Petro Poroshenko; massive media censorship and streamlining, while targeting with repression and chicanery any outlets, editors, and journalists daring to resist, for instance Strana. ua; systematically and illegally abusing emergency powers and unaccountable but powerful institutions (most of all, the National Security Council) to stifle criticism; and, last but not least, the fostering of a dictatorial personality cult which was boosted by the West.
Since then, things have only gotten worse. Zelenskyy has steadily fastened his hold over Ukraine, while prolonging and losing an avoidable and catastrophic war for a Western strategy to demote Russia. Ukraine has been bled dry for a cynical and (predictably) failing Western scheme; Russia, meanwhile, is not only winning but has greatly increased its autonomy from the West.
The war may end soon, or it may drag on. For the sake of Ukraine, we have to hope it will be over soon. Zelenskyy, if he were a decent man, would then have to hand himself over to post-war Ukrainian justice or be his own judge, the old-fashioned way. But Zelenskyy is no decent man. If rumours now swirling are not only plausible but truthful, then his masters in Washington may be the ones preparing an appropriately indecent end for him. If the protests against him accelerate, Zelenskyy may even end up “colour-revolution-ed.” How ironic.
-RT