Zelensky walked up to the lysée Palace in Paris during Vladimir Putin’s invasion on February 24, 2019, and ultimately became a global symbol of the free world
Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst currently based in Odesa. He is currently a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and used to speak for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.
It is perhaps easy to forget that Zelensky honed his political muscles earlier in his career standing up to another bully in 2019 – then-US President Donald Trump, who tried to bamboozle the novice politician in the quid pro quo scandal.
At the time, I was in Paris where I saw Zelensky pull up to the lysée Palace in his small car while Putin drove up with an armored limo. The host, French PresidentEmmanuelMacron, hugged Putin, but shook hands with Zelensky.
Then on February 24, Russia’s total invasion blasted these concerns into the background. Almost overnight, that dark cloud over Zelensky vanished as he defied critics, and miraculously pivoted into the role of heroic wartime president and global symbol of defender of the free world.
Failure to demonstrate progress on the battlefield with billions of dollars worth of military kit could upset Western backers. But capitulation to Russia would be a political death sentence.
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Zelensky learned how to deal with bullied children in the rough and tumble neighborhoods of “Kyravyi Rih” in central Ukraine.
“After the full-scale invasion, once he got into a position of being bullied by someone like Vladimir Putin he knew exactly what he needed to do because it was just his gut feeling,” Yevhen Hlibovytsky, former political journalist and founder of the Kyiv-based think tank and consultancy, pro.mova, told me.
The leader who was offered a USevacuation when Russia launched its full-scale invasion quipped: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
It all seems like a long, long way since Zelensky thanked his supporters at a campaign rally in a recreated nightclub in a city that was still fogged in war. Standing on stage among the fluttering confetti, he looked in a state of disbelief at having defeated incumbent veteran politician Petro Poroshenko.
Around this time last year — with Russia on the brink of launching its full-scale invasion — Ukrainians’ confidence in their president to handle the military threat massing on their doorstep was low.
His bubble includes many people from his previous professional life as a TV comedian in the theatrical group Kvartal 95. Even in the midst of the war, a press conference held on the platform of a Kyiv metro station in April featured perfect lighting and curated camera angles to emphasize a wartime setting.
As for his skills as comforter in chief, I remember well the solace his nightly televised addresses brought in the midst of air raid sirens and explosions in Lviv.
Zelensky is projecting confidence and competence in a modern way to a younger, global audience with his use of T-shirts and hoodies.
Zelenska has shown herself to be an effective communicator in international fora because she has shown herself to be smart. She met with King Charles during a visit to a refugee assistance center in London. Zelenska was not on the cover of TIME magazine and there was only a passing reference in the supporting text.
There are signs that Zelensky’s international influence may be waning. For example, last week, in what analysts called a pivotal moment in geopolitics, the G7 imposed a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian crude – despite pleas from Zelensky that it should have been set at $30 in order to inflict more pain on the Kremlin.
There have been at least 76 strikes on critical power infrastructure in Ukraine on Friday, including at least one strike on the Ukrainian parliament. As winter bites, millions of Ukrainians are enduring long periods without heat, electricity and water. If it means defeating Russia, many Ukrainians say they are willing to endure hardship for another two to five years.
Victory will surely depend on the West maintaining a united front against Russia. Zelensky and his envoys abroad have done an enviable job of warning Western leaders that if they don’t support Ukraine in pushing Putin back completely, their own nations’ security could be caught in the crosshairs of Russian aggression.
“Paradoxically, Zelensky achieved the thing that Putin most wanted to achieve but failed … to rally support domestically with a patriotic war in order to deflect and distract from his abject failures at home. Michael Popow is a New York-based business analyst and said that being shown up by a comedian must be extremely painful for Putin.
As Zelensky said in a recent nightly video address: “No matter what the aggressor intends to do, when the world is truly united, it is then the world, not the aggressor, determines how events develop.”
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It is an unprecedented conflict in modern times, as Thomas L. Friedman notes in The New York Times. Citing TikTok and other social media platforms, along with satellites and live traffic data on Google Maps, Friedman writes, “Welcome to World War Wired – the first war in a totally interconnected world.”
The Iraq War veteran Daniel Johnson wrote in Slate that it was a large-scale invasion being livestreamed, minute by minute, battle by battle, death by death. Those of us who are lucky enough to be miles away from the missile strikes, gunfire and shelling are watching the events unfold in real time on smart phones and other screens.
Ukraine has interested me as a country since my first visit there as a college student in 1969, when it was an unhappy member-state of the Soviet Union. I recall making the mistake of calling Ukraine a “Russian satellite” and being quickly slapped down by a patriotic gentleman, who told me in no uncertain terms that Ukraine had its own beloved language, literature, history, music and cultural traditions.
But Zelensky’s success was limited and his popularity went into decline after a couple of years. His approval rating had plummeted by October of that year.
Zelensky, a fluent Russian speaker, has also appealed to Russians in another video, urging them to “just stop those who lie, lie to you, lie to us, lie to everyone, to the whole world. We need to end this war. We can live in a world of peace.
Even though the army he commands is pales in comparison to Russia, his communication skills and social media skills make him a formidable opponent for Putin.
He has challenged Putin’s logic of aggression and laid the basis for a future where the Ukrainian people once again have the right to self-determination.
Zelensky was accused of letting pledges to reform the judicial system slip, which could derailUkraine’s ambitions of joining the European Union.
For Ukrainians, it was an emotive issue. Many people took to the streets in freezing temperatures during the revolution of dignity, which were to become part of the bloc.
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It seems that even a war can’t inspire a nation to stop being greedy. Senior officials have been accused of either profiting from the war or conducting themselves with gross incompetence since February.
In one case, the defense ministry allowed the military to purchase food at inflated prices, a well-known ploy to skim off money.
In another, a deputy prosecutor general was fired for being on holiday with his family. He reportedly drove there in a Mercedes owned by a wealthy businessman.
The scandals have come at a bad time for the Zelensky administration as they are facing a monthly budget deficit of $5 billion.
It could raise eyebrows among skeptical Republican legislators on Capitol Hill who are questioning the more than $100 billion in aid pledged to Ukraine. According to recent polling in the US, an increasing number of Americans think that Washington is giving too much aid to Ukraine.
Expecting Zelensky, especially during a time of war, to launch a full-scale fight against corruption would be naive. Billions of dollars in aid flowing into the country and millions of people in exile watching events back home means that the administration has little wiggle room.
As some Ukrainian commentators point out, many officials were allowed to resign rather than be fired. Anastasia Bolshedvor, who has gained a large social media following as an unofficial government watchdog, questioned whether the shakeup — coming almost a year into the war — was a show or a genuine step in the war against corruption.
Zelensky may be opening himself to accusations of overreach. The Zelensky group in Parliament was thrown out of the ruling party after it was discovered that one of the members was on the beach while his country was fighting a war.
But it also took the extreme step of banning lawmakers from traveling overseas, and just at a time when they should be seen to be ambassadors for the country, amplifying Zelensky’s call for more military aid.
Odesa member of parliament, Oleksiy Goncharenko, went so far to call it an illegal move that violated the Ukrainian constitution. He told me that the rights of MPs can’t be limited during martial law.
It is a bad decision for the country. Many of us are doing frontline work and building up support for Ukraine,” he said, adding that he just came back from the US where he gave several talks at universities and met with senators and member of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Reports of corruption at the highest level of government are nothing new to most Ukrainians. But the new allegations come at a time when millions of them have fled Ukraine for safe haven abroad — and could act as a deterrent for them coming back anytime soon.
Many younger Ukrainians I have spoken to agree that the government shouldn’t see the war as a way to stop the fight against corruption even with the economy in tatters.
“I’m 100% against turning a blind eye against corruption and finding excuses such as the state of the economy or the war. I asked the 29-year-old Ukrainian entrepreneur if we should continue investigating and fighting corruption.
I haven’t stopped recycling because of the war. It’s my fundamental belief and moral standard. As a country, we are fighting the demons outside, but at the same time, we need to keep fighting the demons inside.
“We have a lot to rebuild. A lot of transformation is what we expect. It is the rebirth of our nation. It’s the Ukraine that my generation wants to see. I hope that the young people that left see that their country is changing. Kearley said that they should be part of it.
Zelensky needs to respond in the same way that Ukrainian servicemen have responded to allegations of wrongdoing.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/opinions/zelensky-ukraine-war-corruption-crackdown-bociurkiw/index.html
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