Discerning Volodymyr Zelensky

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

“‘Not A Very Nice Person At All,’ she read. ‘I wonder what kind of person would put that on a wallet?’ ‘Someone who wasn’t a very nice person,’ said William.” –Terry Pratchett, The Truth

In this extremely short and simplistic post, I will do what it says on the tin: Scrape away the already deeply impacted layers of wartime propaganda<1>. I propose to do this in the old-fashioned American way: By following the money. (I was inspired to write this post by Gonzalo Lira, former NC contributor (!), streaming from Kharkiv (!!). His video, “Who Is Zelensky? A Puppet—and Here’s Why,” is perceptive, lucid, and convincing, albeit NSFW. I recommend you listen to it, on the off chance that the more hits this video has, the more of a public figure — hence, safer — Lira will be.)

As a caveat: I’m going to be looking at the dealings of a billionaire, the armed militants he funds, and a politician he funds. All these relationships are so complicated and intricate as to make, say, The Clinton Foundation look like a child’s scribbled drawing. All these relationships are deeply rooted in the history of Ukrainian nationalism as well, with plenty of heroism and villainy to go around. By taking a transactional approach (“follow the money”) I abstract away from all that. (For example, Watergate exploded because it involved cash payoffs, not because of the often bizarre personal histories of the participants.)

With that, let’s begin with the money man.

——

Reuters:

Some of Ukraine’s private battalions have blackened the country’s international reputation with their extremist views. The Azov battalion, partially funded by Taruta and Kolomoisky, uses the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its logo, and many of its members openly espouse neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic views. The battalion members have spoken about “bringing the war to Kiev,” and said that Ukraine needs “a strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process.”

(There’s that “redemptive violence” thing.)

And besides funding the Azov Battalion, Kolomoyskyi is funding somebody else, seriously and for some time.

The Politician: Volodymyr Zelensky

That would be the current President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky<5>. From the BBC:

n the Ukrainian political television dramedy Servant of the People, Volodymyr Zelensky plays a teacher who becomes president after a video of him ranting against government corruption goes viral. It’s typical of the programme’s slapstick take on the country’s struggles with oligarchy and overindulgent bureaucrats during its 18 years as an independent, post-Soviet nation. But scenes like this one have taken on a new significance now that Zelensky has become the real president of Ukraine, thanks to his popularity as a fictional leader.

Everything you always wanted to know about Ukraine*

*But were afraid to ask

AJC Boone is back with the kind of post that is destined to become the default reference for everyone trying to separate propaganda from empirical reality over the manufactured Ukraine crisis. A former diplomat, Boone is very much on her home turf here, and it shows: for the first time you will read about the real nature of Ukraine – its history, culture, leadership disaster and political corruption; and you can follow the evidenced blow-by-blow story of just how little Putin really ‘wants’ in relation to the country – as well as just how much diplomatic demonisation has been used by American and European media-military machines in search of an ethereal ‘threat’. In a theatre where Truth long ago left by the back door, Amy Boone is a class act. Enjoy.

What I Saw Then

In my Kievan summer of 1992, the US embassy was staffed largely by the diasporan-offspring of WWII Displaced Persons, slavically world-weary Americans called Ihor and Natalja and Bohdan. The subject of lunchtime chatter in the canteen ambled from no-goodnik relatives nicknamed “Snake,” to the unwelcome prospect of obligatory visits to country-cousins at the weekend. My own three staffers were not Americans but local-hires. These included an administrator-of-a-certain-age with dreamy blue Mitford eyes, who sighed like a Xanaxed Chekhov sister over lost romance; and soon-departing Oleh, who on the basis of his Jewish ethnicity had finagled permission to emigrate to Israel. This felt like a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket escape from a place whence there literally was no escape (the USSR a mere three years before had been exactly such a place). I could hardly imagine that any Jews survived the predations of the 20th c in this part of the world. Oh, hang on a second, Oleh was not, strictly-speaking, Jewish, I learned. His wife, from whom he was long-divorced – she was Jewish…. Oh.

Onto this Green Acres tableau of lassitude and mischief came a hard-assed US Ambassador, Roman Popadiuk. Formerly President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, Popadiuk spoke quickly, walked briskly, and grilled his team of diplomats at morning meetings with the surly impatience of a Very Important Person who still expected to be called at any moment to the Situation Room under the West Wing. Emigré Popadiuk spoke native Ukrainian in meetings with actual Ukrainian functionaries who, characteristic of the residual Soviet elite, preferred to speak Russian.

I thought at the time that it must be Popadiuk’s peculiar self-regard that drove his outsized (not to say delusional) diplomatic expectations, so ill-matched to the place where he was stationed. He seemed occasionally to notice the mismatch himself, as his voice would taper off in mid-soliloquy, a sour twinkle in his eye reflecting the dawning realisation of the frankly comical limits of his environment. I now realise that Popadiuk was far more likely to have been carrying Washington’s brief than any private one. Popadiuk was therefore not so much an ambitious eccentric, as a man dangling in the abyss between what Washington needed Ukraine to be, and what Ukraine actually was.

What Washington has needed Ukraine to be since the end of the Cold War – given President George Bush Sr’s Administration’s fateful and oft-quoted (by Russians) promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not extend itself “eastward by a single inch” – is a plucky little damsel-in-distress, a restless democratic republic yearning-to-breathe-free, who will invite the Americans in to rescue her from the big bad monster next-door. In rescuing the damsel/Ukrainian land-mass, the US-NATO alliance will be able to snuggle right up against the pancreas of its old Soviet foe. And everybody will cheer and hoist the FBI/CIA operatives on their shoulders…

What I’ve Noticed Since

As for what Ukraine actually is, I offer this little string of pearls:

Never Wrestle with a Pig. You Both Get Dirty and the Pig Likes It