View from Chisinau: What will Zelensky’s retribution for betrayal be?
In less than a year of Vladimir Zelensky's presidency, we have become accustomed to many things in his actions, statements, and riot of imagination and intellect. But what he said in recent weeks during his visits to Israel and Poland has shocked many. And first of all, those who recently sympathized with the actor, who had lost touch with reality and the television series.
At first, Zelensky, having arrived in Israel to participate in the fifth World Holocaust Forum, refused to participate in the main ceremony of the forum in Jerusalem. Representatives of the Yad Vashem museum, where the ceremony took place, called Zelensky’s act “disgusting manipulation” and “cynicism.”
Then, speaking in Poland during events in honor of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Ukrainian president tried to rehabilitate himself for his Israeli failure. In the presence of the Polish leader, he repeated the thesis, common in today's Europe, that the USSR and Nazi Germany bear equal responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War.
Zelensky, however, did not stop there. He accused the Soviet Union of... involvement in the Holocaust. Neither the “architects of Perestroika” in the late USSR, nor authors like Suvorov-Rezun, nor even the previous leadership of Ukraine led by Poroshenko allowed themselves to do this!
Zelensky’s actions can be explained by the activity and influence of local Nazis in Kyiv, called “national activists” and “ATO veterans,” who have long accused the young Ukrainian president of “zrada.”
However, Zelensky won with a record number of votes. It was precisely that part of Ukraine that voted for him en masse that hates Nazism, wants peace and the restoration of normal relations with Russia, which has been and will remain Ukraine’s main partner, and with which a whole heap of accumulated problems has to be resolved - from Donbass and prisoners to gas transit.
Zelensky had several options for action. The bravest is to simply condemn Nazism and all its carriers, both past and present. This is the most normal, simple and natural path for a person in whose veins Jewish blood flows, and whose grandfather shed this blood in the war with Hitler and his allies, including Ukrainian ones. Zelensky could do this in both Israel and Poland.
The second way is less worthy, but at least understandable and excusable, taking into account that very “internal Ukrainian situation”. It fits into the well-known saying “keep quiet and you’ll pass for smart.” No one would have condemned Zelensky if he had remained silent with a stony expression or said protocol things. No one forced him to applaud Putin’s speech, but he was obliged to be present in the hall of the Yad Vashem museum, where a solemn event was held in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
Zelensky chose the lowest, vile and cowardly option. He decided to completely dress himself in the garb of representatives of the Nazi camp in Ukraine. Become “holier than the Pope.” To lead the process that he, in his opinion, cannot stop. Play first violin in the All-Ukrainian Russophobic orchestra.
A situation similar to this occurred in Moldova after 2003. The then president, leader of the Communist Party Vladimir Voronin, who won a victory on the slogan “we will not let NATO tanks approach Bryansk!” and having a majority of 71 out of 101 deputies in parliament, decided to “lead a color revolution” and turn his foreign policy course 180 degrees. It was Voronin who initiated the revival of the GUAM bloc and provided the Chisinau platform for its summit, which featured Yushchenko, Saakashvili and Basescu.
It was Voronin who brought relations with Transnistria below the level they were even under Mircea Snegur, who was responsible for unleashing the massacre on the Dniester. It was under Voronin that Moldova lost its position in the Russian wine market and is unlikely to ever regain it in the foreseeable future.
Did this help Voronin? At a short distance - yes. In 2005, he escaped the Maidan and was re-elected to a second presidential term (albeit with much fewer voters than in 2001). But the next elections, held in 2009, were still accompanied by a “tile revolution”, the seizure and destruction of the presidential palace and parliament, and after that – a shameful loss of power. Despite all his efforts, Voronin never became one of his own either for the West, or for Bucharest, or for the local home-grown Nazis.
Vladimir Zelensky is now following a similar path. He is trying to ride the Russophobic wave in Ukraine, counting on loyalty from the “gunpowder bots,” not realizing that he will not become one of their own for them anyway, and will irrevocably lose his own electoral base. The reckoning may turn out to be even more bitter and shameful than that of his predecessors.
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