Zelenskyy finds his appeal to the West disappearing

One by one, those politicians in the West who are gangbusters about the war are losing to rivals who are sceptical.

In the Broadway musical “Chicago”, Richard Gere as the canny lawyer sings about the way he is managing to get acquitted so many guilty clients, “Give them (the jury) the old razzle dazzle and they will come begging for more”. Helped by the ruling establishments of several NATO member states, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fed western populations with a surfeit of razzle dazzle. They have been asked to believe that Ukraine was fighting for the very survival of western civilisation. Were Ukraine to be defeated by Russian forces, western civilisation would be given a mortal blow. In an aside to countries outside NATO, Zelenskyy has a grim message. The Ukraine war in reality began in 2014 with the outlawing of Russian language and culture within the boundaries of Ukraine. Those citizens who had Russian as their mother tongue were thereafter discriminated against in matters of education and employment, in an effort at forcing them to either leave their country for Russia or abandon their heritage. Instead, they chose to break free of Kiev and set up the Donetsk and Lugansk autonomous republics, besides Crimea. All three had been part of Russia until a Soviet leader, who was from Ukraine, transferred them to the other Soviet republic. Given that they were all part of the Soviet Union, until 1991 when the Soviet state imploded and Ukraine became independent, in 2022, the Kremlin reverted the three territories back to Russia. In November 2021, President Putin was given information from agents in Kiev that in March 2022, the Ukrainian military would launch a full scale attack on Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk, a move that he preempted by himself having Russian regular forces enter the three territories on February 26, six weeks before the reported Ukrainian attack. We do not as yet know whether the apprehensions of Putin were correct or not. What we do know is the admission by then German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the two guarantors of the Minsk accord between Russia and Ukraine, France and Germany, had from the start no intention of honouring such a written commitment. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly admitted a few weeks before the January 20 takeover of the US Presidency of Donald Trump that since 2021, copious quantities of weapons were sent to Ukraine from the very first months of the 2021 Biden Presidency, weapons presumably far in excess of purely defensive needs.

Media outlets such as RT, Sputnik and other “instruments of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine” (to use the language of Ursula von der Leyen) were outlawed throughout member states of NATO, including those that champion freedom of speech and then resort to measures such as the jailing of Julian Assange. Presumably this was in order to protect free speech. By definition, any outlet deviating from reporting the razzle dazzle noise of Zelenskyy was banned, and those parroting the language of the Ukrainian President were of course permitted to convey the message of “Ukrainian centrality to Western interests”, and that of imminent victory over Russia. Small wonder that citizens in the UK, for instance, still believe that winning the Ukraine war is central to the interests of Britain and that Russia is on the ropes, gasping for survival. Many still continue to brush aside any reports to the contrary as “Kremlin propaganda”. Unfortunately for Zelenskyy, western public opinion is beginning to turn hostile to the view that large amounts of the money they pay as taxes should any more fund what more and more are beginning to comprehend is an unwinnable war. It has been so from the very start of the conflict that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but try telling that to the pundits in Paris, Berlin, Washington or London. One by one, those politicians in the West who are gangbusters about the war are losing to rivals who are sceptical. Whether it be the Reform Party in the UK, Marine le Pen in France, AfD in Germany or the Trump Republicans in the US, already have, or are poised to gain, substantial ground over their Zelenskyy-boosting rivals. As for his own people, were a free election to take place in Ukraine, he would be voted out of power. Using the excuse of the war, Zelenskyy has been avoiding the holding of such an election. Should the war end, doing so may become more difficult, in which case he would come up with the excuse that he is indispensable for the reconstruction of Ukraine, now that his walking away under pressure from Biden from the April 2022 peace deal with Russia has ensured that much of the cities in his country have been destroyed. As for NATO, the lack of substance in its vow to stand by any member that gets attacked was shown by Zelenskyy when drones sent by him damaged the TurkStream pipeline, in effect an attack on NATO member state Turkey. In practice, NATO policy is to downscale military sales to Taiwan combined within effect giving away far greater supplies to Ukraine, thereby ignoring the China threat to Taiwan while forcing Russia to forge a closer and closer relationship with China. In contrast, the Trump national security picks seek to ensure that Russia at worst remains on the sidelines in any China-US conflict rather than join hands with Beijing against Washington. Small wonder that China is working overtime to ensure that at least two if not three US Republican Senators vote against Trump picks to deny them confirmation of nomination. Any such defector from the ranks would ensure the hostility of his or her own party, in the way that Liz Cheney is now witnessing. She acted on the belief that Trump would soon be toast, but as it turned out, that fate has been reserved for her where her party is concerned. It would be good news for the world were the Trump national security picks to get confirmed, for then there would be a chance of Russia standing by the democracies in Cold War 2.0 in the way that China was against Russia during Cold War 1.0. Such a change would make it certain that the democracies will prevail in the ongoing Cold War over the coalition mobilised by China.