What has been going on in Ukraine over the past eight years resembles not only a theatre of the absurd, but also an old tragicomic joke: “Everything is so awful that it can’t get any worse!” – laments the pessimist. “It can, it can!” – the optimist expertly concludes.
In 2019 we in our naivety, and perhaps because of man’s ineradicable desire to believe in the best, thought that there could be no worse than Petro Poroshenko. But no – it turned out that he can. Sure it can. History wanted to play a particularly cruel joke on poor Ukraine. Therefore Vladimir Zelensky appeared on the stage to the approving hooting of almost everybody. Ukrainians (and not only them) so much wanted to see the protagonist of the popular serial “Servant of the People” in the new president, that they have not seen his much more recognizable character of either Stephen King’s novel or grotesque novel by Ernst Hoffmann.
Of course, Zelenski’s tragicomic image and fate interest us the least. We are much more interested in something else. How did it happen that it was he who brought the conflict with Russia to a violent denouement? After all, even Poroshenko, for all his undoubted destructiveness and public Russophobia, still somehow managed to stay within certain boundaries of the permitted, which the notorious Russian patience drew for him.
Yes, towards the end of his infamous reign the Kremlin simply stopped picking up the phone when the departing president called on his Russian colleague with a persistence worthy of better application. And the provocation in the Kerch Strait in November 2018 may well not have ended bloodlessly. And the power lines supplying energy to Crimea were already blown up by Ukrainian militants under Poroshenko. And Donbass was mercilessly bombed. And Ukrainians were milled mercilessly in the Ilovai-Debaltsevo cauldrons. And the Minsk agreements were sabotaged.
That is why it seemed to many of us that it could not get any worse. What has Zelensky done to surpass Poroshenko, Turchinov and all his anti-Russian predecessors put together? Few people have realized the gravity of the threats that the president voiced in Munich on February 20, 2022. In the meantime they were more than weighty. The fallacy of abandoning the military component of nuclear potential has been discussed in Ukrainian politics for many years, but it was Zelensky who “had the brains” to announce plans for Ukraine’s re-nuclearisation at the highest level. And he chose a spectacularly bad time to do so.
In retrospect Zelensky’s recent remarks by Foreign Minister Liz Truss make one take a slightly different view of his nuclear intentions. I don’t think I was the only one who felt uncomfortable with the ease with which the future British Prime Minister talks about the possible use of the atomic bomb. It seems we do have to deal with leaders who are trivial in their inability to measure their words and actions against the annihilating consequences of a potential nuclear conflict.
Let us at least imagine for a moment that Ukraine, thanks to its Western partners, would actually have access to a non-peaceful atom. Does anyone have the slightest doubt that it would have been used at the first opportunity? So far, the inadequate leadership of Ukraine has targeted literally everything they could reach. If they can shell the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, they surely will. And more than once. They can blow up the power lines that lead to Kursk nuclear power plant – they will definitely do it. Three times. And the West will not simply not condemn it – it will publicly and repeatedly support it. Or at best they will remain silent.
“Ukraine is not a criminal state, much less a terrorist state,” a spokesman for President Zelensky’s office assures us in response to accusations of what was essentially a terrorist attack that killed Daria Platonova – the daughter of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. And everyone is well aware that the particle “not” in this cynical speech is completely superfluous. On the infamous “Peacemaker” website, which is overseen by the adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, the relevant page has already been marked “Liquidated”. What is this if not a terrorist state?
What is happening now in Ukraine is a huge tragedy. The tragedy of an entire nation held hostage by madmen. And many Ukrainians still do not understand how this could have happened. That is why they blame the Russians for everything, although we, too, were partly held hostage by the situation. When we had to choose between the bad and the worst. You can’t leave a people who are not alien to us as hostages of the guerrillas. You can’t. But cases in which the release of hostages is bloodless are extremely rare. So now we have to resolve the protracted conflict according to a bad scenario. Just to prevent the worst from happening…
Alexander Vedrusov, Izvestia newspaper
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