As much as the Putin BoyZ love to denigrate Zelensky, I don’t have to love the guy in order to support the people of Ukraine who have been invaded by Putin.
Ukrainians elected him and threw out Putin’s puppets who were the corrupt politicians prior to the Orange Revolution.
He’s the guy they have now, and IMHO he’s doing what he has to do to help his nation survive this invasion. He’ll cozy up to the worst of folks, including Biden, if they help him.
It doesn’t mean Ukraine hadn’t been corrupt. It doesn’t mean Zelensky is George Washington. But they could have done a lot worse.
What? You seem to have recent history garbled. The president before Zelensky was Poroshenko, aka “The Chocolate King”. He was elected after the 2014 putsch we instigated wherein the rightfully elected president, Yanukovich (who was Prime Minister during Yushchenko’s presidency), was replaced by Victoria Nuland’s little pet, Yatsenyuk (a choice that horrified the Europeans, especially the Germans, as his party had neo-Nazi roots).
George Soros & Friends’ Orange Revolution brought Yushchenko to power in 2004.
None of the above were really “Putin’s puppets”, although the neocons claim that Yanukovich was (despite his sometimes standing up to Putin and habitually striking hard deals with him) and that this was the reason for the 2014 putsch. Just prior to the putsch, Ukraine was looking to join the EU, and the EU offered a “path to EU membership” deal which did not guarantee membership and required painful economic reforms (plus difficult political reforms) before Ukraine could be considered for membership.
EU membership has its benefits, but also has its costs. Given the state of the Ukrainian economy at the time, the EU deal appeared to have more costs than benefits (and would have severely limited Ukraine’s trade with Russia). Putin made a counter-offer to Ukraine that was a very sweet deal (some might call it so sweet as to be a sort of bribe). Yanukovich decided to take Putin’s offer (although it was more complicated than that, and he tried to find a more middle way that would allow Ukraine to be in trade partnerships with both the EU and Russia, but the EU would not budge on that point), and the Maidan protests commenced, organized and financed by Nuland & Friends (remember how she bragged about the billions of our taxpayer dollars spent?).
The Maidan protests culminated in the violent putsch that ousted Yanukovich, placed Yatsenyuk (appointed by Nuland) in power as Prime Minister, and a new presidential election was called. Poroshenko (a powerful oligarch) was elected, with Yatsenyuk remaining as Prime Minister.
In 2019, Zelensky ran on a peace ticket, promising to implement the latest version of Minsk and make peace with the Russians. He won over 70% of the vote. The people wanted peace. Like all Ukrainian politicians before him, he also ran on an anti-corruption platform. Sadly, the Ukrainian people have voted again again for anti-corruption over three decades, only to get leaders as corrupt as the last bunch every time.
The newly-elected Zelensky went to Zolote to try to convince AZOV to cooperate with the peace plan and honor the ceasefire. They mocked him to his face. The video is painful to watch. Now, considering that AZOV was mostly owned by Kolomoisky (who was also Zelensky’s sponsor and sugar daddy), it’s anybody’s guess whether (1) Zelensky was sincere when promising peace during his campaign, but Kolomoisky cynically foiled that plan after his guy got elected and had his boys to give him a good spanking and show him who his Daddy was or (2) Zelensky was lying all along about making peace and the Zolote trip was Kabuki theater or (3) AZOV got a bigger payoff from another party, possibly a rival oligarch, possibly someone or some entity connected to our government, who knows?
Whatever the case, Zelensky’s popularity rating plunged after that, and was in the low 20s just prior to the Russian invasion. Of course the Pandora Papers didn’t exactly help him, either. Biden “won” the election here in the US in 2020 and whoever is running his administration appointed none other than Nuland as a deputy secretary of state.* And here we are ...
Oh, did you happen to notice that Ukraine did not accede to EU membership after the 2014 putsch despite lots of talk and various agreements — even though the whole thing was ostensibly about that? Ukraine did not even achieve Candidate status until June of this year, when it was awarded to Ukraine as a show of support and as a poke at the Russian Bear. Despite all the fanfare surrounding it, it’s just symbolic, as the required list of conditions will obviously be impossible for Ukraine to meet in the foreseeable future: reform of the Constitutional Court;
continuation of judicial reform; anti-corruption measures, including the appointment of the head of the SAPO; anti-money laundering measures; implementation of the anti-oligarchic law (haha!) including recommendations of the Venice Commission; harmonization of audiovisual legislation with European system; change in legislation on national minorities. Ukraine has actually regressed on some of these points since Candidate status was conferred.
*Nuland’s appointment horrified even the leftiest of libs: