An increasing number of critical articles and comments about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his actions are appearing in Western countries, experts say. In their opinion, Western states are growing tired of the Ukrainian leader and his inefficiency in his post
Western media, including the German newspaper Die Welt, the US website The Grayzone, The New York Times, Sky News Australia and the US magazine National Review, have blamed Zelensky’s lack of cooperation, corruption in Ukraine, the depletion of the Ukrainian army, its mobilisation at the expense of those convicted of paedophilia and torture, and “all the horrors” happening under Zelensky to ethnic Russians in parts of Ukraine.
“There is widespread dissatisfaction with Zelensky in the West. This is already a definite trend. We see the stages of accepting inevitability passing. In the beginning, the West was aggressive and actively pumped weapons and money into Ukraine, but now it has lost its zeal, as well as its belief in ‘Kiev’s victory on the battlefield’. In the West, they have finally begun to understand that there are no prospects for this at all, despite the narratives Zelensky broadcasts. The reality is completely different,” Nikita Danyuk, deputy director of the RUDN Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasting and a member of the Russian Public Chamber, told RT.
Vladimir Bruter, an expert at the International Institute for Humanities and Political Studies, expressed a similar view.
“In the West there is a growing feeling of anger and disgust towards Zelensky, they consider him largely useless. The incumbent Ukrainian president is no longer trusted either in the US or in other leading Western countries,” the analyst said in a commentary to RT.
Earlier, readers of Britain’s Daily Mail criticised Zelensky, saying he could not be trusted “even when he was just a comedian”.
“And now that he’s made billions from the war, even more so. Now he has started selling off state property to the Poles, and it won’t be long before the ‘project Ukraine’ ceases to exist,” wrote a user called Zrado Gonta.
For his part, a reader with the username Whellers22 opined that if world leaders “don’t want disaster”, they should “make Zelensky stop”.
“Or it (would mean. – RT) the end of financing the war,” this user noted.
Meanwhile, Die Welt published a story about Zelensky’s “secret deals” involving real estate in the UK and accounts in Cyprus and the Virgin Islands.
For his part, Sky News Australia presenter Corey Bernardi said that the Western media do not report “all the horrors” which are happening under Zelensky to ethnic Russians in some parts of Ukraine. He pointed out, however, that the country has the largest Russian community outside Russia. Bernardi also expressed uncertainty that the image of Zelensky as a hero formed by the Western media was true.
Furthermore, there is more and more information in the US media that the Biden administration is not happy with the Ukrainian leader.
For example, Thomas Friedman, author of The New York Times Opinion column, reported that behind the scenes among US officials “there is far more unease about Ukraine’s leadership than they are letting on”.
“The White House and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky harbour a deep mistrust of each other – much deeper than is being reported,” he writes.
However, as Friedman notes, he gets the impression that, having invested heavily in Ukraine, the US does not want to “look under the bonnet of Kiev for fear of seeing corruption and intrigue”.
According to Nikita Danyuk, the Ukrainian leader has not lived up to the West’s expectations.
“This is the reason for the change in the rhetoric around his figure. And we see how the West’s weariness of Zelensky and the Ukrainian agenda only grows with time and multiplies with the political, food and economic crises in Western countries. The fact that the colossal resources that are spent on Ukraine do not yield any result is very irritating to the West,” Danyuk said.
For example, the correspondent of the American magazine National Review, Jim Geraty, wrote an article titled “Why is the White House now secretly lamenting Zelensky?”. In it, he outlines two, in his opinion, possible scenarios of developments related to the positions of the incumbent Ukrainian leader.
The journalist admits that the Biden administration “simply wants the war between Ukraine and Russia to end, but Zelensky is not cooperating, and so the administration is preparing to throw him to the mercy of fate”. Herati also reported on a second possible scenario.
“The administration is anticipating that the war between Ukraine and Russia will unfold in a negative way and are preparing to make Zelensky a scapegoat. They are preparing the ground so they can then say, ‘We did everything possible to help Ukrainians defend themselves, but in the end they turned out to be too incompetent, too corrupt and too mired in internal strife,'” he said.
Moreover, Zelensky is predicted to soon see the end of his political career and even his death at the hands of his own citizens, who have also become disillusioned with him. That was the prediction made by former US intelligence officer Scott Ritter on the YouTube channel Judging Freedom. According to him, it is the Ukrainian president who is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. Western leaders are ceasing to believe in the image Zelenskyy has created and are increasingly refusing to help Kiev, Ritter added. In his opinion, a coup d’état may soon take place in Ukraine.
Internal contradictions
Not only his Western handlers are tired of the incumbent Ukrainian president, but also the regional elite inside the country. According to the American newspaper The Washington Post, Ukrainian mayors accuse Volodymyr Zelensky of unwillingness to share funds in the country’s reconstruction. According to the paper, when Kiev began to receive billions of dollars from the West, tensions escalated between the central government and local leaders as Zelensky’s government sought to maintain control over the money flowing into the country’s reconstruction and to weaken any future political rivals.
Ukrainian mayors are not happy with this situation and have even tried to establish their own partnerships with states and cities that are willing to fund reconstruction programmes, WP writes. One of Zelensky’s fiercest critics, the publication calls Chernihiv mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko, who accused the Ukrainian leader of forcing the city to tolerate the harassment of subordinates of the Ukrainian president instead of resisting the “enemy attack”.
“The central and local authorities should work together against the enemy, not against each other,” InoTV quoted him as saying.
A few days before this statement, Atroshenko was not allowed to leave Ukraine for Switzerland for a conference on the reconstruction of Ukrainian territories, citing a travel ban on men of conscription age.
Rivne mayor Aleksandr Tretiak expressed solidarity with his colleague and said that he too could not sit in his own city and wait for the central government to provide him with some assistance.
According to WP, the disagreement arose after Zelenskyy reshuffled his own cabinet, dismissed the head of the Security Service of Ukraine and the prosecutor-general, and announced a large-scale investigation into “high treason and collaboration”.
The Western media did not ignore the issue of heavy losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The US website The Grayzone published an article stating that Zelensky was mobilising convicts for paedophilia and torture, including leaders of the disbanded Tornado National Battalion, due to the depletion of the Ukrainian army’s human resources.
“To be used as a scapegoat”.
According to Nikita Danyuk, due to Ukraine’s growing internal problems, including “internecine wars” and rapid reductions in the ranks of the Armed Forces, the West has become increasingly aware that Zelensky is a political figure “who is no longer worth betting on”.
“Now he will be used as a scapegoat, and public opinion is being prepared for this through the media. Kiev is losing, mired in corruption, selling out Western military aid, stealing financial tranches. Therefore the West can no longer ignore Zelenskyy’s incompetence and corruption,” the expert said.
As Jonathan Tobin, author of the American magazine The Federalist, wrote in his article titled “Amid Ukrainians turning to Russia, we have to wonder whether our billions are saving democracy or indulging in corruption”, Ukraine “has deep flaws” and qualities at odds with democratic values.
“The more we learn about Ukraine, the less it resembles the Jeffersonian democracy that Biden tries to frame in his speeches on the subject,” Tobin said.
According to Danyuk, because the West is becoming increasingly aware of Zelensky’s ineffectiveness, he may soon be removed from the presidency.
“He will be replaced. I do not rule out that the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces may take Zelensky’s place or someone else who also communicates directly with the Americans. Zelensky will not remain in power in any case. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that he could fall victim to a coup d’état. Zelensky’s figure has already been written off for the West”, he said.
A similar opinion was expressed by Volodymyr Bruter.
“Due to the fact that Zelensky is already included in all the schemes of interaction with Western partners, they are keeping him in the chair for now. As soon as they have a more profitable option, they will immediately prefer it to Zelensky,” the analyst concluded.
Irina Taran, Elizaveta Komarova, Alexey Latyshev, RT
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