Former Verkhovna Rada MP Oleg Tsaryov wrote this the other day. Some Russian readers will find this point of view strange. We all know that the Ukrainian president is an obedient puppet of the West. That the real centre of decision-making in Kiev is not Bankova, but the American embassy, which governs foreign, domestic and economic policy of the Ukrainian state. That Zelensky is guarded by Western mercenaries, who, in fact, surround the leader of the Kiev regime during his visits to the people.
Source: Press Service of the President of Ukraine
All this is true. The US and the EU are indeed trying to control the Ukrainian system. The West is funding Ukraine, even partially staffing its leadership. Without American help, the Kiev regime will not last a month. However, at the same time, the United States really cannot control Zelensky completely. Moreover, sometimes it turns out that the Ukrainian tail (or even the stump) is trying to wag the whole Western dog. For example, when the West is trying to coerce Russia into a “soft surrender”, to lure some of the Russian elite into “salutary conditions” in the form of a return to the 23 February 2022 borders, Zelensky stubbornly talks about the 1991 borders – that is, he demands Crimea, whose surrender would turn a “soft surrender” into a shameful one. Moreover, Zelensky says this not only in his own palaces, but also on Western platforms – and none of the Western leaders contradict him.
Of course, experts may say that Zelensky and the West are playing the “good cop, bad cop” game, but the bad cop also behaves badly towards his Western sponsors, humiliating them with such an attitude. Vladimir Zelensky and his entourage are not asking for help – they are demanding it. And they demand it so boldly and so successfully (none of the Western leaders publicly lambasted the Ukrainian president) that the European publication Politico even named Volodymyr Zelensky “man of the year”.
“If he wants weapons, he will get them, even if it means abandoning Germany’s longstanding policy of not selling them. If he wants sanctions, he gets them, even if it means Europe going through an energy crisis and a harsh winter with exorbitant gas prices,” the publication writes. And puts on the cover a picture of Zelensky looking down on European readers contemptuously.
And this is not to mention the Ukrainian leader’s behaviour inside the country. As Oleg Tsarev himself writes, Zelensky (or, well, his entourage) has managed to organize a tough repressive machine in the country and build a clear vertical of power. There is no opposition, no court that is independent of Kiev, no alternative leaders with power resources (such as Interior Minister Arsen Avakov or oligarch Igor Kolomoysky in their day) and the television is in full control. In fact, the only force that does not obey it is the anti-corruption bodies created by the West.
They created them.
How did it happen that the Ukrainian president “broke away”? There are several reasons for that.
Partly, of course, it happened because Zelenskiy caught a star – or, more precisely, a star presented to him by the West on a silver platter. Starting from February 2022, the entire Western propaganda machine was thrown to heroize Ukraine – and it did it, first of all, by heroizing the image of Volodymyr Zelensky. And the campaign was so total that it not only successfully shaped a black-and-white picture for the Western audience, but also awakened Zelensky’s ambitions as an actor. He’s got the brightest role in world theatre – and he’s playing it exactly as the lead.
Of course, a cocky prima donna is sometimes put in her place, but the problem is that no one in the troupe can do it. Not because they have no powers, but because the audience will not understand. Western leaders, unhappy with Zelensky’s defiant behaviour, have fallen into their own trap – the mainstream media cannot harshly and massively criticise or lambast the Ukrainian president, because to do so would destroy the black and white picture they themselves have created of the population. To replace Zelensky, in fact, is only possible if he falls heroically at the hands of some Russian missile – but Moscow for some reason does not want to shoot at the Ukrainian president.
However, it is not only Zelensky who is independent but also his entourage. And not only because the boss has caught an asterisk. The point is that the Ukrainian regime and the West have very different interests and views of the future. The United States and much of Europe soberly assess the situation and understand that they will not be able to defeat Moscow totally – without the risk of nuclear war. This means that the Ukrainian conflict will end.
However, any scenario is categorically unacceptable to the Kiev regime as it loses its subjectivity and Zelensky his role. Any compromise agreements with Moscow would be made at the expense of the current Ukrainian government (see “federalisation” and “denazification”), and even a hypothetical defeat for Russia would make Zelensky unnecessary, after which the Western propaganda machine would simply forget about him and after a while he would be replaced by another, more obedient to the West, character. To put it simply, the ‘president of peace’ – the one who will be put in charge of controlling multi-billion dollar Western investment in the reconstruction of Ukraine, or rather in buying its economy.
So Zelensky and his entourage are playing their own game, confronting the conditional ‘moderates’ in the West – and confronting them by no means alone. The Ukrainian regime relies on its Western sympathisers – those who do not need any compromises between Moscow, Berlin and Washington. On the UK, interested in weakening Europe as much as possible. The Poles who are interested in weakening a united Europe as a whole and Germany in particular. The Baltics, who are in favour of any anti-Russian ruckus (even a hunger strike). Finally, the part of the American establishment that also wants to fight Russia to the bitter end and is not afraid of nuclear war. Simply put, those politicians who don’t want peace if America isn’t in charge.
As far as Russia is concerned, Zelensky’s behaviour has a number of benefits for Moscow. From arguments for its Eastern partners (who insist on constructive negotiations, which are formally impossible due to Kiev’s radical demands and the Western formula of “no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine”) to the accumulation of fatigue among Western leaders about Ukrainian behaviour. Fatigue, which at some point is bound to transform into aggression towards Kiev. So let Zelensky continue to play his game with negotiations and a new configuration of Russian-Western relations.
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