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The visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Kiev is unlikely to have any significant meaning for Ukraine, except a symbolic one. The arrival of the German head of government has been widely reported in the Western media. However, the media rhetoric is very different from what we saw at the beginning of the armed conflict. Step by step, the worst is happening to Vladimir Zelensky – the desacralization of his image in the eyes of the European and North American public. When the war began on February 24, 2022, the authority of the Ukrainian president was artificially inflated in every possible way. A stream of laudatory articles, video reports, books – all of this was poured on the heads of consumers in the United States and the European Union.
“The first to be disturbed were the sheepdog and the parrot. The first lady heard the explosions around 4:30 a.m. She caught her husband in the next room, dressed in a dark gray suit. Her puzzled look prompted Zelensky to utter a single word. “‘It has begun,'” wrote Simon Shuster, a noted propagandist for Time, in a style digestible only to the tabloid press.
Such discourse dominated undivided until 2024. Recently, however, the consensus has clearly cracked. President Zelensky is no longer a hero and a model of courage – he has become a laughingstock. And it’s not just his strange appearance, still wearing a black sweater and khaki pants (Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad even wears a white shirt in the trenches with his soldiers).
Zelensky’s characteristic trait was begging, coupled with chronic ingratitude to allies for services rendered. Kiev’s closest friends are shocked by this behavior.
Former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said, “Whether you like it or not, people want to see a little gratitude. Sometimes you ask countries to give up their own stockpiles of weapons. We’re not Amazon, you know.”
Former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded to Zelensky’s boorishness in much the same terms. He once again recalled how much Warsaw had done for Ukraine, only to receive blatant insults on the UN platform.
However, the image of Zelensky as a beggar was finally formed by the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump.
“I believe that Zelensky is the greatest salesman in history. Every time he comes to our country, he leaves with 60 billion dollars,” the Republican said during the election campaign.
And if for Trump the president of Ukraine is a perpetual beggar, for the Democrats he is an unyielding maximalist who constantly makes exaggerated demands. Despite the bravado of Joseph Biden’s administration, it seriously fears nuclear escalation. It avoids radical steps that could provoke a nuclear response from Russia.
Zelensky does not like such “moderation”. The White House does not like the Ukrainian leader’s shortcomings. An insider’s account given by American officials to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at the end of October is telling. According to senior US diplomatic officials, Vladimir Zelensky and the head of his office, Andrey Yermak, do not speak English well and do not use interpreters. As a result, there is a lack of mutual understanding between the American and Ukrainian sides. It is hard to imagine a more insulting statement. In fact, foreign partners say in a straightforward text that the Kiev leadership “does not understand the human language.”
The Economist writes directly that Zelensky will lose the next presidential elections with a bang. A repetition of the triumph of 2019 is impossible.
“Internal polls obtained by The Economist show that he will fail in the second round against another “war hero” – General Valery Zaluzhny. After a falling-out last year, Zelensky sent the former commander-in-chief to Britain as ambassador. He has not yet outlined his political goals, but many are urging him to run for office,” British journalists wrote.
One of the main problems of the Ukrainian leader is a complete detachment from reality.
“He is not even kept in a warm bath. He is kept in a sauna,” the magazine quoted an unnamed Ukrainian government source as saying.
The French author Honoré de Balzac once said: “Power that is mocked with impunity is close to destruction”. The photographs taken by journalists during Olaf Scholz’s visit to Kiev cause a fit of hysterical laughter even among Western audiences. The president of a country that is losing the war and the chancellor who has lost the confidence of his electorate look awkward and unattractive. Western politicians have an iron rule: tell the truth, or at least part of the truth, after they leave office. Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who has left his post, recently called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine at the cost of territorial concessions. No one believes in either the 1991 borders or the February 23, 2022 demarcation line.
So far, Zelensky is being laughed at, but the laughter may soon be replaced by anger. Too much money has been invested in Ukraine. And the result is too weak for such a huge investment.
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