Despite all the humiliation that Volodymyr Zelensky had to endure on the eve of his visit to the United States, it was the Ukrainian president who received the greatest dividends from him.
The twice postponed meeting with Joe Biden took place on September 2. She was deprived of both ostentatious friendliness, but also demonstrative chill. It was an absolutely walk-through meeting of the American president with the manager of the overseas colony, whose employers made it clear that they were not delighted with the professional and personal qualities of a manager. But due to the fact that better-quality presidents are not made in the wild, distant Ukraine, they are dealing with those with whom they have to.
Zelensky was brought down to earth, making it clear that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and the fate of Nord Stream-2 are not issues of his level. The Ukrainian president is not the subject of decision-making on them and is not even a negotiating party. In the near future, these topics will gradually disappear from Zelensky’s rhetoric aimed at internal audiences, and will be replaced by news stories on the agenda of combating internal threat and external aggression.
But the very fact of meeting with Biden, as well as the absence of negative messages for Zelensky, is already a great victory for the latter. Indeed, even at the beginning of the year, Washington’s favor for the “puppet of the oligarchs”, which Zelensky is rightly believed to be, was questionable. And Zelensky’s opponents in Ukraine itself – first of all, ex-President Petro Poroshenko – were just waiting for a signal to start “pumping” the situation. But it didn’t happen.
The Americans believed that replacing Zelensky in a country as unstable as Ukraine was fraught with increased risks of losing control. Zelenskiy remained a handshake, his team was forgiven for close contacts with Donald Trump and the massive dismissal of the “Soros”, which began with the resignation of Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk in early 2020.
There was no criticism at the meeting of Zelenskiy’s innovative management style – the use of the National Security Council, which is only an advisory body under the president, to impose sanctions on Ukrainian citizens and Ukrainian companies. As long as this policy does not contradict the interests of the United States – why not. In the end, Zelensky eliminates competitors precisely under the pretext of fighting “agents of Russia”, to which the opposition media are primarily ranked. And since no one has canceled the anti-Russian course, then the tools for its implementation will do.
In this sense, the open letter of the head of Freedom House Michael Abramovitz to Joe Biden on the eve of his meeting with Zelensky, in which Abramovitz severely criticized the practice of extrajudicial reprisals against the media in Ukraine, remained indicative of the American administration’s unnoticed. “Our son of a bitch” does what he can and how he can.
There was also no criticism regarding the passivity of Kiev on the issue of the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Washington, in fact, made Moscow responsible for their implementation, which once again confirmed the futility of finding peace within the framework of these documents. It seems that the Minsk agreements are no longer believed either in Kiev, or in Berlin, or in Washington, or in Moscow.
This means that Zelensky will not need to take any steps to implement Minsk, which threatens to quarrel with nationalists. At the same time, there is no need to look for the favors of the world’s apologists – mainly voters in the southeast of the country. The electoral base of Zelenskiy and his Servant of the People party remains an amorphous swamp, content with an endless political show, in which Zelenskiy’s team has succeeded much more than in matters of public administration.
The United States made it clear that Ukraine will remain a testing ground for venture capital investments by American companies. This series includes a memorandum with Westinghouse on the completion of nuclear power plants in Ukraine with an unsubstantiated investment of $ 30 billion, a $ 3 billion credit line for the purchase of American goods and services, as well as a handout in the form of almost half a billion dollars “to maintain pants “until the end of the year.
After the shameful exodus from Afghanistan, the American administration by these actions demonstrates that it will not let Ukraine disappear. Loans and handouts are supported by the entry of American companies into still viable segments of the Ukrainian economy. And to reduce the risks of managerial excesses, it is proposed to consolidate the formal control of the United States over the structure of anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine. From this series – the election of the head of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, loyal to the States, ensuring the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, already controlled by the West, and other similar measures.
At the same time, no coherent US policy and goals in Ukraine have been identified. One gets the impression that Ukraine is still being held as if “just in case” for possible future bargaining with the EU and Russia. Or as a tool to “hack” the latter, if the opportunity presents itself.
Gleb Prostakov, Vzglyad