by Jack Montgomery, The National Pulse:
POLITICO has published a lengthy article criticizing President Volodymyr Zelensky’s record, highlighting his “authoritarian” tendencies, and warning of “another Maidan” – possibly signaling that the Western media-political class believe the Ukrainian leader has grown too big for his boots.
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The news comes shortly after veteran news man Seymour Hersh released a damning report detailing how Western taxpayer money is being embezzled by Zelensky and his generals.
Still praising Zelensky for his “oratory” and “spirit”, POLITICO casts a rare, critical eye over his performance prior to the war, the way he has governed during it, and even forgotten scandals such as his offshore holdings, exposed by the Panama Papers financial investigation.
As an insiders’ news organization which often relies on anonymous sources in the U.S. government and elsewhere for its stories, some might suspect POLITICO‘s unusually critical piece is intended as a warning shot from Zelensky’s senior backers.
Indeed, a “former senior U.S. diplomat who has considerable experience in Ukraine” is quoted as saying Zelensky is not doing enough to tackle government malfeasance, and that opposition politicians are not just “deeply worried also about corruption and his authoritarian style” but also “probably” correct to believe “there is going to be a reckoning as soon as the war ends”.
Budge Over, Biden.
“[Zelensky] thinks he’s the number one politician in the world and that Joe Biden is way, way below him, and even further down [are] leaders like [France’s President Emmanuel] Macron and [Germany’s Chancellor Olaf] Scholz,” a former Ukrainian government minister said.
POLITICO paraphrases its source as adding that Zelensky “seems to begrudge sharing the stage or the limelight, much like an actor wanting all the best lines” — indeed, the Ukrainian leader’s recent past as a television star who merely playacted the part of a Ukrainian president is referenced throughout the article in unflattering terms.
One opposition politician, Mykola Knyazhytsky of Lviv, puts his name to comments expressing “worry about the future of democracy” in Ukraine.
“Even in wartime, there must be political opposition, the democratic process must continue, there must be parliamentary oversight,” he laments — although he does also say that “of course” the opposition must remain “united” behind the government for the time being.
Knyazhytsky alleges that Zelensky is “taking advantage of presidential wartime authority and martial law to grab more power, to control the television media, to sideline parliament and to disregard legislative oversight on how government funds are being disbursed” — language which, crucially, presents the Lviv lawmaker’s assessment of the situation as a matter of fact rather than opinion.
What Opposition?
Using marital law, Zelensky banned, by presidential decree, the second-largest party in the Ukrainian parliament. The Opposition Platform — For Life, was regarded as something of a successor to the defunct party of former president Viktor Yanukovych, ousted by the Maidan revolution in 2014.
Many other parties large and small, left and right, have also fallen under the hammer, including the Left Opposition, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists, and Union of Left Forces.
POLITICO‘s repeated hints that Zelensky could face a Maidan of his own may be more likely than anything else in the article to disturb the self-styled Servant of the People.
“I was on the streets for the Orange Revolution when I was in my last year at university in 2004, and I was on the streets again in 2014. So, the 10-year mark of when we tend to mount revolutions is approaching,” says Inna Sovsun, of the “liberal pro-European” Holos party, in the article’s very first paragraph.
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