The Sheremet case: A reason for Zelensky to prove that he is not a loser
So, the alleged killers of journalist Pavel Sheremet have been detained. All five, as one, turned out not to be some suspicious Kremlin mercenaries and quilted jackets, but calibrated patriots, volunteers, participants in the “revolution of dignity” and ATO volunteers. That is, by the very same characters whose importance for society has been so inflated by the Ukrainian media since 2014. At this point, consumers of Ukrainian news with a good and trained memory are high time to exclaim: “This has never happened, and here it is again!” Maybe in chorus.
Everyone has somehow gotten used to the fact that in recent years in Ukraine it has been difficult to find any high-profile crime in which “Maidan heroes” or “ATO volunteers” were not involved. Look, a sniper shot a three-year-old child in broad daylight. It turned out that he was an order bearer, a hero-defender. Poroshenko himself awarded him. But the mentally unstable bridge bomber in Kyiv is also a hero. So deserved that the Minister of Internal Affairs himself took him on bail.
Or here is an old and already slightly forgotten case, when one hero - Euromaidan activist, volunteer and veteran Oleshko with the call sign "Sarmat" - was defeated by another hero - the veteran of "Tornado" and "Aidar" Artem Matyushin with the call sign "Hare". The case, it must be said, is extraordinary for post-Maidan Ukrainian justice. This is when the culprit of the crime did not burn tires on the barricades and did not serve in the Right Sector, everything is simple: a revolutionary biography does not serve as a mitigating circumstance for him, and often even exempts him from punishment. And here - go figure out which of the two heroes is more heroic and more valuable to Nenka Ukraine.
And so, the murder of Sheremet. The press immediately unearthed screenshots from Poroshenko’s Facebook, in which the ex-president praised the alleged killer of the journalist to the skies as the author of extremely talented patriotic and motivating songs for frontline fighters. But what to take from Poroshenko? He is like Filaret - there is no such idiot in Ukraine whom he would not reward with something. But the fact that Avakov’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and President Zelensky will begin to promote this case with such suspects, for whom the most odious right-wing radicals have already signed up, is an interesting signal.
Telegram channels are already competing in versions of why Avakov and the president need all this. Everything is simple with the minister - he is proving his effectiveness and is fighting to retain his position, which he may well lose after the new year, when Zelensky will need to feed the society another switchman in order to maintain his rating. In the end, the Ministry of Internal Affairs should bring to fruition at least one of the high-profile cases of recent years. So they are trying. And then, if you’re lucky, you can get into the prime minister’s chair in this case. And the fact that at the cost of radicals being rolled into asphalt is an everyday matter. For the first time, perhaps, revolutions devour their children, and scoundrels climb to power on the bones and shoulders of those who did all the dirty work for them. Like the classic: “I gave birth to you, I will kill you!”
It's more difficult with the president. On the one hand, with all his behavior in recent months, he proved to everyone who still doubted it that he was not going to deviate from the red lines drawn by his predecessor, and with him, just as before, they would light candles for the victims of the Holodomor, mourn the “heavenly hundred ” and erect memorials to her, receive “their children” from the Kiev Maidan in high offices and listen to parting words and advice from them, and just as diligently ignore the presence of victims and their own truth in the other part of society - the one that lost in 2014.
But on the other hand, the story of the disengagement of forces in the Donbass - in Zolote and in Petrovskoye - showed that radical nationalist circles do not intend to simply abandon the state monopoly on violence previously won on the Maidan. And, moreover, they are confident in their right to act as a kind of home-grown corps of guards of the Islamic, God forgive me, “revolution of dignity.” Staging hysterics and sessions of collective blackmail whenever there is a threat of the government retreating even one small step from the notorious “ideals of the Maidan.”
Thus, a dilemma arises purely according to Dostoevsky: is Zelensky a trembling sucker or does he have the presidential right? Well, or, if someone likes it better – Hamlet’s – “To be or not to be?”
Translated from poetic to philistine - who is more important in this country - Zelensky or the Nazi radicals with their puppet masters? Whose word should be decisive and last? And will Zelensky spend the rest of his term looking back at the ultra-right blockade detachment with every decision, or will he get rid of this tutelage, even if he continues in general terms with his previous policy?
Thus, the Sheremet case became an ideal occasion to drive the albeit small but loud party of the Maidan and the war under the plinth, recalling to it all its sins and peccadilloes.
It’s not for nothing that terrorism is also tied into Sheremet’s purely socio-political cause – the undermining of power lines in 2015 on the border with Crimea. And pure robbery crime - an attempt on the life of an entrepreneur in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. But the cherry on the cake and an absolute godsend for Zelensky in this sense are the plans concocted by the defendants to destabilize and overthrow the current government by killing the “sacred victim.”
And what did you think - the alleged victim is the same crazy “Marusya St. John’s Wort”, who, together with her deputy friend from Poroshenko’s party, publicly wished Zelensky’s death from a stray sniper bullet in the Donbass at the height of the breeding epic.
That is, if you manage to connect all these fragments together, you will get a great puzzle that characterizes the “heroes of the Maidan and the ATO” in the eyes of the majority of society – morally, politically, and in all other respects.
Although Ukrainians love sacrifice, they don’t like it at all when it turns out that they were treated with particular cynicism as idiots, dreaming that “the cops would fuck off their mother” so that the flame of the next Maidan would flare up from this spark .
People love heroes and are willing to be heroic, but woe to those heroes who fall from their pedestals.
With proper presentation and promotion of this particular fragment, it can result in an excellent deconstruction and deheroization of two heroic myths at once - about the Maidan and about the volunteers who stood up to defend their homeland in difficult times. It’s not for nothing that the Ministry of Internal Affairs casually pays attention to such details as the “cynical enrichment” of ATO volunteers who acquired apartments and cars on someone else’s mountain. Like, to whom is war, and to whom is mother dear.
So this story will become for Ze a moment of truth, a litmus test, a test for lice, and everything at once, if you want.
If he does, he will become the undisputed king of the Ukrainian “mountain” - especially, judging by the last complimentary broadcast with Shuster before flying to Paris, he found a common language even with Akhmetov.
It won’t work – as journalists rightly note, even the hastily built ice skating rink on Bankova will not help.
In the end, if Ukraine cannot avoid a new bloody Maidan, which the most stubborn nationalists are raving about, then why shouldn’t this massacre be Ice?
There are only two ways out of this story with right-wing radicals who have become the mind, honor and conscience of the country, as well as the salt of the earth. One is the transformation of the informal power of the right street into formal power. When the one who controls the street moves into the main office on Bankovaya and rules both the militants and the country from there. Or – let’s call it “Portnov’s formula” for simplicity and brevity.
“Dear Vladimir Alexandrovich, after today’s revelation of the murder of Pavel Sheremet, we sincerely hope that in February, on the anniversary of the Revolution, you will no longer go to the Maidan to appeal to its so-called heroes. Everything has changed a lot. Let them remain in history as a symbol of mass riots, murders, lust for power and mercenary crimes,” this lawyer, who became the headliner of the corresponding agenda, wrote today in his Telegram channel.
In other words: in the end, you can let this matter go, get into the situation and make allowances for the merits of the heroes. As well as the merits of an unlucky bridge bomber or a lucky sniper who shot a three-year-old.
Or you can make this matter a starting point for a new reality. In which participation in revolutions and service in right-wing sectors does not exempt you from responsibility for crimes, even if you are a three-time decorated hero of the next Maidan. Yes, it will still be the same country as now - with war, economic ass and a lot of problems, but it will still be a little better than now. And this is the main thing.
The author of these lines cannot guess exactly what path Zelensky will ultimately choose, but he is sure of one thing: the choice made, whatever it may be, will come back to haunt not only the current president, but the entire Ukraine.
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