The President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky, is at a crossroads. Stop the human bleeding of war, sitting down with harsh resignations at the negotiating table, or prolong the resistance and further weaken the Russian invasion on the battlefield, even at the risk of leaving the battlefield untouched. prolongation of the fight.
Zelensky is winning the media war, with his determined will to resist the Russian invasion and his international recognition. But that leadership also hides haunting shadows that could end up suffocating him. If Russia ends up imposing itself militarily and leaves on the negotiating table the fragmentation of Ukraine as a fait accompliZelensky can be remembered as that president tainted by the corruption that he did not know how to avoid the mutation of his country into a failed state and engulfed by its neighbor to the north.
Zelensky’s capacity for conviction, supported by Western media support, has led, for example, to the numbers of military and civilian casualties supplied by the propaganda apparatus of the Ukrainian president, well advised by the Americans and the British, being the ones that are imposed on the European news and in much of the world. Thus there is a tremendous disproportion between the exorbitant figures of the fallen in the Russian ranks and the timid number of Ukrainian dead and wounded. The minimum logic of a conflict would seem to disprove such data, especially if one of the contenders, the one that has launched (and planned) the invasion, is one of the planet’s armed superpowers and before invading Ukraine it already launched a devastating massive bombing campaign of his enemy’s basic military installations.
Zelensky’s intention from the beginning has been to involve the NATO countries in the fight against Russia
One of the mistakes that Zelensky can commit at this time is to repeat the mistakes that are being most criticized in his enemy, the suppression by force of any discordant element in his ranks. This is how the recent defenestration of two generals of the internal security service of the country and the Kherson region points out, describing them as traitors and traitors, in the best style of his adversary, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Do these steps reflect an incipient cracking of the solidity with which the Zelensky government has shown itself since the beginning of the war or do they show a growing paranoia in the face of the uncertain evolution of the crisis?
The addresses to the country made by the young Ukrainian president (44 years old), with a careful pose of firmnessin paramilitary attire, muscular and with a well-groomed beard, have been complemented since the beginning of the conflict with careful and forceful speeches broadcast over the internet to prominent international venues, from the United States Congress to the main European institutions — this Tuesday he will speak for the Lower House of Spain. He has asked, in messages addressed to public opinion around the world, that the streets of the cities be flooded by protesters who support Ukraine against Russia. “Get out of your offices, your homes, your schools and universities. Get out in the name of peace. Come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to defend freedom, to support life!” he said in one of those sermons posted on the website of your Presidency.
Zelenski’s training before immersing himself in politics, as an actor, screenwriter and creator of television content at the head of his production company Kvartal 95, has shown his boards time and time again in the art of oratory. That lively and fun dialectic, and his mastery of body language, were essential to his landslide victory in the 2019 elections and he is playing a key role in convincing his fellow citizens that they must resist the Russian advance. Brave popular resistance, although in reality it is the Ukrainian soldiers, well equipped for years by the West, who are responsible for fighting the enemy and not the heroic people with the blow of Molotov cocktails, another of the half-truths with which Zelensky has captured international sympathy .
Accuracy is not so important in the event of war, especially if Zelensky’s millions of followers on Twitter or Instagram have already chosen him. Ukrainian John Snow as executor of the evil Night Kingembodied by a Vladimir Putin eager to win the Game of Thrones geopolitical. The funny comedian changed the chip and gave way to the superhero of the masses, to the accusing voice of a politician of Jewish origin and Russophone by birth, thus denying his allegiance to Nazism attributed to him by Russian propaganda. On the contrary, Zelensky does not hesitate to identify Putin with a revived Hitler, while he paraphrases Churchill or invokes the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to explain the Russian invasion.
“Russia is walking the path of evil,” Zelensky said in one of his speeches, confirming that a struggle between light and darkness is taking place in Ukraine. “If we fall, you fall,” he asserted in another video, while showing the hypothetical effects of a Russian attack on Paris. Zelensky’s intention from the beginning has been that: to involve the NATO countries in the fight against Russia. If not directly, then at least in the battle of feelings.
Zelensky and the ‘Pandora Papers’
Unlike Putin, the ukrainian leader speaks live on the internet. It can be heard anywhere on the planet and at any time, while the Russian “ogre” requires an outrageous paraphernalia to air the minimum speech. The image of the knight without armor, smiling with his omnipresent and impeccable olive green shirt, contrasts with the suit and circumspect Putin, faltering with his own hawks and stern in the gesture of someone who has to contain his anger so as not to erase Ukraine from the map.
According to the American journalist and writer Anne ApplebaumAn expert on Russia and the Soviet Union, Zelensky has made it clear that she will not give up or leave Ukraine, despite offers for her personal evacuation made by the Joe Biden Administration. “” He is an actor and he knows that he has to play a role. And he will play it until the end “, says the author of the book Gulag. History of Soviet concentration camps.
In the leak of the so-called Pandora Papers, Zelensky’s name emerged
The skillful management of networks, so important when it comes to confusing the enemy or winning allies, was behind the success of the digital revolution that Zelensky launched when he came to power. He intended to bring Ukraine up to par with its ex-Soviet cousins to the north, the Baltic republics, and thus entrench the country on its Euro-Atlantic path. However, advances in the digital age were not matched by success in The war against corruption, that made pre-war Ukraine one of the countries in Europe most affected by this plaguesecond only to Russia itself and Azerbaijan.
In this widespread corruption, another of the shadows that hang over Zelensky takes shape and that have sentenced in advance the vain promise of rapid incorporation of Ukraine into the European Union in exchange for the recognition that this country will not be part of NATO and of what its role as a neutral state it is an indispensable step to placate the Russian fury.
During the election campaign that brought him to power, Zelensky had the support of the Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, accused of fraud and money laundering in the United States. Zelensky was then accused of being a puppet of Kolomoisky and that his 2021 law to end corruption was actually masking an offensive against the tycoons most unruly with the state, while turning a blind eye to those more accommodating and close to Kolomoisky. This tycoon “is not only a partner of Zelensky. He is also his mentor, “Ukrainian deputy Volodimir Ariev said on a social network.
Kolomoisky is not the only obstacle that could spoil a successful exit for Zelensky in case things go wrong in the military field for Ukraine. In the filtering of the so-called Pandora Paperscoordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), on international financial crimes, Zelenski’s name emerged and his creation of offshore companies since 2012 through his production company Kvartal 95 in order to acquire luxury properties in London and have shares in film production and film distribution companies.
These and other accusations have called into question the real commitment of the current Ukrainian president to the fight against corruption. And it is not difficult to foresee that more could arise if the loss of Crimea and other territories in the east of the country were ratified at the negotiating table.. Zelensky’s popularity would plummet. In this complex situation, the Ukrainian leader seems to have no other way out than resistance and increased Russian attrition on the battlefield. The increase in Russian attrition and, unfortunately, in Ukrainian civilian casualties in the war.