There is a bad light about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is the face of dissent about the conduct of the war, about how it was told to Ukrainian citizens and the West, and about the leadership of power during over 21 months of martial law. The criticism comes primarily from his political opponents, who are becoming increasingly louder in a way that could not have been imagined until a year ago. More subtly, they also come from overseas, where part of the American establishment and public opinion are increasingly opposed to indefinite support for Ukraine. There is the mayor of Kiev, former boxer Vitali Klitschko, a leader revered for leading the capital in difficult times, who thundered: “People wonder why we weren’t better prepared for this war.” Because Until the very end, Zelensky denied that this would happen. There was too much information that didn’t correspond to reality. Of course we can lie to our people and our partners, but not forever.”
INSIGHTS
Frozen Ukrainian counteroffensive, what is happening? Kiev changes its plans, the war has now stalled
A denial of the president’s political actions, which Klitschko’s confidants describe as long-standing, but which, as we know, is best preserved in times of war in order to express it at the right moment when the country’s consensus towards the Leaders and outside support begin to crumble.
This is all the more true since this leader has never skimped on purges to surround himself with loyalists in the name of fighting corruption and threatening pro-Russian internal fringe groups. This also explains why Ukrainian border guards prevented former President Poroshenko from leaving the territory last Friday. According to the security services, Poroshenko was rejected because of his planned meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, who “systematically expresses an anti-Ukrainian position,” so much so that Moscow would have used the meeting “for its information and psychological operations against Ukraine.” Ukraine”. She described allegations that Orban returned to the sender as “internal political struggles” which, together with “certain political purges, are an indication that Ukraine is not ready for EU membership”.
Then there is former presidential adviser Arestovych, who has already announced his candidacy for the next (postponed) elections and who aims to beat Zelensky with the kind of painful realism that, in his opinion, the current president never had held out for the entire duration of a miserably failed counteroffensive, deceiving a people of whom more than half still want to fight to victory (60 percent, up from 70 percent a year ago, according to a Gallup poll), without the means to do so to have . Finally, there is Chief of Staff Valery Zaluznyj, with whom Zelensky has been at loggerheads since the Battle of Bakhmut. The two obviously did not agree on the comprehensive defense of a city that was not military strategic and caused Zalužnyj a completely unjustified number of losses, but which the President had now exposed himself to before the American Congress, calling it a battle that “will change the course of our war for independence and freedom.”
DISSAVORS
We all know how that ended. Today, disagreements between Ukraine’s two most popular leaders are growing. Regardless of the explanations, the West wants to know not if, but when the war in Ukraine will end. Starting with the USA, which has great difficulty managing two conflicts at the same time in an election year. Some evidence of this comes from the last meeting of the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group last October in Brussels, where, according to the American press, the US and European delegations began discussing possible “peace negotiations” with Moscow with Zelensky. Discussions that could become increasingly “urgent” towards the end of the year or shortly thereafter.