Ukrainians have lost confidence in Zelensky.
Ukrainians have lost confidence in President Zelensky for many reasons.
Famous reporter Seymour Hersch shared the following on his substack:
In fall of 2023, Ukrainian General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of the country’s armed forces, gave an interview to the Economist and declared the war with Russia had become a “stalemate.” It took three months for President Volodymyr Zelensky to fire him. The general, who is the most popular public figure in Ukraine, was named ambassador to London a month later and has served there with distinction, if quietly.
Zaluzhnyi is now seen as the most credible successor to Zelensky. I have been told by knowledgeable officials in Washington that that job could be his within a few months. Zelensky is on a short list for exile, if President Donald Trump decides to make the call. If Zelensky refuses to leave his office, as is most likely, an involved US official told me: “He’s going to go by force. The ball is in his court.” There are many in Washington and in Ukraine who believe that the escalating air war with Russia must end soon…
British journalist and historian Owen Matthews is no Russia friend, he is super Russophobic and Putinophobic. And yet this is one of the most damning assessments of war criminal Zelensky published at the Spectator in the UK.
Donald Trump this week boosted Ukraine’s air defences with new Patriot batteries, threatened Vladimir Putin with sanctions if he does not agree to a ceasefire, and even reportedly gave tacit approval to more Ukrainian strikes on Moscow. Trump’s newfound support for Ukraine is a welcome lifeline. The question is whether his help will be enough to stop Russia’s relentless attacks before Ukraine is engulfed in a critical military, political and social crisis that threatens to destroy it from within.
Putin chose war over peace this spring because his spies and generals told him that Ukraine is on the brink of collapse. Alarmingly, they may be right. Ukraine is running out of fighting men, its frontline soldiers are exhausted and US military support has narrowed to focus on air defence. The Kyiv government is racked by corruption scandals and purges, public faith in their future and in their leaders is tanking…
Here are some more points from his report:
Matthews: “US military support has narrowed to focus on air defence. The Kyiv government is racked by corruption scandals and purges, public faith in their future and in their leaders is tanking and pressure to make peace at almost any price is growing.”
Matthews: ” ‘If the war continues soon there will be no Ukraine left to fight for,’ one former senior official in Zelensky’s administration tells me. They now believe their former boss is ‘prolonging the war to hold on to power’. ”
Matthews: “Even once-staunch pro-Zelensky cheerleaders such as Mariia Berlinska, head of the Aerial Reconnaissance Support Centre, a prominent Ukrainian volunteer movement, express despair. ‘We are hanging over the abyss,’ Berlinska said recently.”
Matthews: “Ukrainian morale, admirably high for much of the war, is collapsing. Back in October 2022, even after six months of violence and bloodshed, 88 per cent of Ukrainians believed that they would be a ‘flourishing country inside the EU’ within a decade.”
Matthews: “Now 47 per cent think that ‘Ukraine will be a depopulated country with a ruined economy’. A separate survey found that 70 per cent of Ukrainians also believe their leaders are using the war to enrich themselves.”
Matthews: Nothing is more corrosive to wartime morale than the idea that a nation’s leaders are stealing as its people fight and die. ‘Corruption kills and loses wars,’ says Kyrylo Shevchenko,a former head of Ukraine’s Central Bank, who is in exile in Austria…
Matthews: “Perhaps the most shocking of all the recent arrests is that of Vitaliy Shabunin, one of Ukraine’s most prominent anti-corruption activists, who has been charged with evading military service and fraud. Shabunin, the chair of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre…”
Matthews: ” ‘Taking advantage of the war, Volodymyr Zelensky is taking the first but confident steps towards corrupt authoritarianism,’ Shabunin wrote on Telegram. He has been a critic of a proposed law on defence procurement that would allow the Defence Ministry+”
Matthews: “to exempt chosen companies implementing government contracts from criminal liability. At the same time, the administration has blocked the appointment of a new independent head of the Bureau of Economic Security, a powerful law enforcement agency +”
Matthews: “with an uncomfortable track record of prosecuting Zelensky’s political opponents.”
Matthews: “A former Ukrainian cabinet minister, once a strong Zelensky supporter (says): ‘…there is pressure against political opponents, rich and influential people who could support opposition are being expropriated and opposition media is silenced.”
Matthews: “Zelensky’s term of office formally expired in May last year. While many argue it’s unfeasible to hold elections in wartime, there is frustration that Zelensky has exiled key potential opponents and imprisoned and sanctioned others.”
Matthews: “Meanwhile, resentment, resistance and anger are rising at aggressive measures taken by the authorities to press-gang military-age men into the army – a process known as ‘busification’. Unlike the Russian army, which is made up of contract soldiers,+”
Matthews: Since Feb 2022 “more than 6.8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, with a further eight million internally displaced. That’s equivalent to 40 per cent of its working-age population. Runaway inflation is impoverishing ever-larger swathes of the country.”
Matthews: “…none of Ukraine’s allies can really help w the country’s chronic manpower shortage or with the deepening crisis of legitimacy that Zelensky faces.Most worrying of all, no outsiders can reverse the spiral of arrests of former regime loyalists,crackdown on opposition”