Karl-Olov Arnstberg is a Swedish writer, ethnologist, and retired university professor. His essays are posted at his blog, Invandring och mörkläggning. Below is today’s installment of his “Sunday Chronicle”. Many thanks to our Swedish correspondent LN for the translation:

Sunday chronicle: Don’t romanticize Volodomyr Zelensky!

July 16, 2023

Swedish Wikipedia has a long and excellent factual article on Zelensky. There you learn, among other things, that he was born in 1978 as the only child of Ashkenazi Jewish parents in the then “Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic”. His father is a university professor and computer engineer. His mother is also an engineer. For twenty years Zelensky has been married to his schoolmate Olena. They have two children whom he has not seen, for security reasons, since the Russian invasion began in February 2022. Zelensky has a law degree but has never worked as a lawyer, opting instead for a career as a comedian and actor. In 2003 he founded the production company Kvartal 95, which produces films, TV series and cartoons. From 2015 to 2019 he played the lead role of the President of Ukraine in his company’s TV series “Servant of the People”. In 2018 his colleagues formed a political party with the same name as the TV series. In 2019, he stood in the presidential elections. His two main political promises were to stop the civil war in the Donbass and to end corruption among the authorities and state administration.

Usually art imitates reality. In this case, it was the opposite: reality imitated art. To first make a television series for several years in which an ordinary school teacher becomes president of Ukraine and solves the nation’s major problems, not least corruption, and then immediately afterwards to run for president — that’s genius. Zelensky was rewarded with a landslide victory. He received over 73% of the vote.

Ritter’s video

A blog reader sent me a recent video of the former UN weapons inspector, US Marine Scott Ritter, reviewing Zelensky. I had just finished a first draft of this column and am rushing to watch the half-hour-long briefing, entitled “Agent Zelensky”.

His hypothesis is that the US is not only behind the 2014 May Day uprising, but also behind Zelensky becoming president. He is an American agent. If so, he is a rogue agent. At the time of writing, during the NATO summit in Vilnius, he has angered both Britain and the US by his lack of gratitude for the support he receives. It doesn’t get any better if former CIA agent Larry Johnson is right when he claims in an interview that Zelensky is a major consumer of cocaine.

On YouTube there are a large number of videos featuring Scott Ritter. My feelings about his ongoing reporting and commentary on the Ukraine war are mixed. He is undoubtedly knowledgeable. He also has considerable analytical skills. The problem is that he has openly sided with Russia, to the point where I sometimes wonder if he is on Putin’s payroll. Whether he is a Russian agent, to spin the same theme.

Ritter’s video about Zelensky disappoints me a bit. It is rather thin, and I already know most of it. Maybe the promised part 2 will be more comprehensive? The best part is the account of all Zelensky’s luxury homes, with a total value of about 50 million dollars — more than half a billion Swedish kronor. These include a villa in Miami, a luxurious summer house in Forte dei Marmi, Italy, and an apartment in London.

At the very beginning of his video, Scott Ritter asks the Russian-American film producer Igor Lopatonok to compare Zelensky as president to an airplane pilot: “Imagine getting into an airplane and discovering that the person flying the plane is not a pilot but an actor playing the role of a pilot. This is a rather poor comparison because becoming president of a country requires no special skills. The actor Ronald Reagan is considered one of the best US presidents. I also think Arnold Schwarzenegger did pretty well as Governor of California, as he was re-elected. Besides, the world is full of professional politicians running their countries into the ground. “Sleepy Joe” (Biden) is probably one of them. He has been a politician all his professional life.

The spring offensive

For those who have followed the war on the battlefield, it has long been clear that Ukraine cannot win, despite the massive support it receives from NATO, the US and Europe, including Sweden. The hope has been in the so-called spring offensive, where Zelensky promised a turnaround that would bring Ukraine to victory. It dragged on and on. Many wondered if there really would be a spring offensive. It finally started, albeit hesitantly, in early June. Zelensky felt compelled to give NATO, the US and the West a run for their money. Why would they send ammunition, tanks and other combat vehicles, replenish the war chest and train soldiers if there was no
counter-offensive?

As I write this on July 12, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reports that in the counteroffensive that began on June 4, Ukraine has lost more than 26,000 soldiers in just over a month. It is not clear whether all these have lost their lives or whether they are both dead and injured so that they can no longer fight. Over 3,000 items of military hardware have been rendered non-combatant. Specifically, this includes 21 aircraft, five helicopters, 1,244 tanks and other armored vehicles, 17 German-made Leopard tanks, five French AMX tanks and 12 US-made Bradley tanks. This is followed by an account of destroyed air defense systems, cannons, mortars and machine guns.

Of course, the possibility exists that the Russian figures are exaggerated, but they are quite consistent with other reports. Moreover, in this war, it is mainly the West that delivers light blue fantasies and outright lies.

These losses have been inflicted on Ukraine without its reclaiming more than a few villages and small militarily indifferent areas of land. Zelensky explains the lack of success by blaming the West’s lack of arms supplies.

Corruption

Wikipedia puts Zelensky’s financial assets in 2018 at 1.2 million SEK. This is probably seriously underestimated. In October of 2021, the so-called Pandora leak revealed that Zelensky, together with Ukraine’s security chief, owned a network of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and Belize. Some of these companies in turn owned exclusive properties in London. Prior to the 2019 presidential election, Zelensky transferred his shares in the offshore companies to the businessman Serhiy Sefir, with the understanding that Zelensky’s family would continue to be supported by these companies.

The American journalist Seymour Hersh, who on his blog has previously given a very credible account via an anonymous source of how the US blew up Nord Stream 2, has also claimed that at least $400 million of the financial aid sent by the US to Ukraine in the war against Russia has disappeared into the pockets of Zelensky and his circle. His sources are CIA officials, anonymized.

Readers of Hersh’s blog also learn that CIA Director William Burns traveled to Kiev to settle the matter on the spot. Burns gave Zelensky a list of 35 generals and senior officials and politicians whose corruption was known to both the CIA and the US government. Zelensky fired ten of the most egregious but did little else. Hersh’s anonymous source describes a 1950s mafia-movie atmosphere and says that “the ten he got rid of bragged about the money they had — while driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes cars.”

The power of the far right

We in the West have been led to believe that Zelensky has the full support of his people. But how do we know? Opposition parties and media have been banned in Ukraine, and Zelensky does not hold press conferences where he risks facing problematic questions. Men of military age — in Ukraine between 18 and 60 — are arrested if they try to leave the country. Young men are arrested on the street and sent against their will to the war front. Such measures would not be necessary if everyone was eager to fight. Ukrainians who openly oppose the continuation of the war also risk being killed by the far right.

In 2019, in his inaugural speech, Zelensky said he was prepared to resign from office if necessary for peace. Just one week later, a leader of the far-right stated in a published interview that if Zelensky carried out his plans, he would not only lose his office but also his life. He would be hung from a tree. Zelensky understood that these were not empty words. Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis and others on the far right are well organized and prepared to use violence. They have a very strong influence on decision-making in Ukraine.

Threats of violence against Zelensky and his government continued. These ranged from direct threats to Zelensky’s life to violent ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi demonstrations where the presidential building was desecrated. Zelensky surrendered. He abandoned his peace platform and adopted policies acceptable to the far right. He began to argue that the Donbass crisis was in fact not a civil conflict but entirely the result of Russian interference and intervention. This was the position of the far right.

Those who threatened Zelensky’s life were not prosecuted, which says a lot about the influence of the far right in Ukraine. Nor did the police and courts protect Zelensky’s supporters and colleagues when they advocated for peace. Equally worrying is that the Ukrainian people did not rise up to demand that the police, courts and other state institutions provide adequate protection for Zelensky. At first glance, this is hard to understand, given his landslide election victory and the fact that at the time of his election there were at least 70 peace advocacy groups active in Ukraine. Why did this popular support for peace not translate into democratic pressure to protect Zelensky and his government from violence? An important factor was undoubtedly that many people feared the far right. They knew that their lives could be at risk if they spoke out. The coercive veto of the far right extended to citizens.

But the problem goes deeper than that. Many people in Ukraine have an ambivalent relationship with the far right. During parts of the 1940s, armed nationalist groups led by Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych fought against the Soviet Union in Ukraine. Because they are considered to have fought for Ukraine’s independence, Bandera and Shukhevych are heroes in today’s Ukraine. Streets and schools are named after them.

To fight the Soviet Union, Bandera’s faction of the “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” openly cooperated with the Nazis when they invaded Ukraine in 1941. They helped the Nazis implement their totalitarian and genocidal policies. The group led by Shukhevych, the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army”, committed mass murder of civilians. This group killed not only ethnic Ukrainians but also tens of thousands of Poles and Jews. But because Bandera and Shukhevych fought for a free Ukraine, many Ukrainians continue to hold them in high regard. Consequently, when Zelensky’s life and government were threatened, the Ukrainian people did not rise up to support him. Incidentally, Bandera seems to be a hero to Zelensky as well. When he was running for president of Ukraine, he said in a radio interview: “There are undeniable heroes. Stephan Bandera is a hero for some Ukrainians, and this is normal and cool. He was one of those who defended Ukraine’s freedom.”

In the end, Zelensky had no chance of fulfilling his election promises. He really wanted peace and, at least initially, pursued his agenda. However, Zelensky lacked the courage, the strength of character and the necessary support from his own people to make it happen. Therefore, Zelensky is a tragic figure.

Unreasonable demands and dangerous proposals

But we must also criticize Zelensky directly, as a destroyer of his country. Zelensky uses aggressive rhetoric and refuses to open peace negotiations unconditionally. His demand is that first Russia must withdraw and return all occupied land, including Crimea. In practice, this means that Ukraine must first defeat Russia. This deepens and prolongs the war.

Zelensky has also taken actions that could have drawn NATO into a direct war with Russia. For example, when a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile crashed in Poland, Zelensky claimed that it was a deliberate Russian missile attack on Poland. He lied in order to drag NATO into a direct fight with Russia, with a high risk of nuclear escalation.

Moreover, in a speech to an Australian think tank, the Lowy Institute, Zelensky made a recommendation that, if followed, would lead directly to nuclear war with the deaths of hundreds of millions or even billions of people. He suggested that the West launch a pre-emptive strike against Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Some have argued that Zelensky was misunderstood, that he was advocating economic sanctions. But his own words say otherwise.

Zelensky could have prevented this war by saying just a few crucial words: Ukraine will not join NATO. He could also have made peace in March and April 2022, just weeks after the outbreak of the war, when talks with Russia were ongoing and successful. But he gave in to Western pressure to end the negotiations — and so the war continued and escalated. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed or maimed, and millions have been displaced. Ukraine has lost over twenty percent of its territory. The same figure applies to the population.

A war criminal

Zelensky comes across as extremely stress-resistant, super-intelligent (which is more than very intelligent), greedy (which is not very successful for a politician who is supposed to fight corruption), power-hungry and prestige-oriented. He is socially adept and can turn on considerable charm (instrumental) when he wants to. He is also a man who will sell his own grandmother if it serves his interests.

So much for his personality. Zelensky is also a head of state who failed to cope with the pressure and betrayed his election promises to stop corruption and end the civil war in Ukraine. He faced a difficult test. Could he put the interests of his country and people before his own security and desire to stay in power? Was he able to keep the US at arm’s length? The answer is no. He failed completely.

Zelensky knows better than most that Ukraine cannot win this war against Russia, any more than Charles XII, Napoleon or Hitler could. He is therefore not a hero but, alongside Putin and Biden, a war criminal. It seems that more and more people are realizing this. During the NATO summit in Vilnius, hundreds of Bulgarians demonstrated in Sofia against Ukrainian NATO membership. One of the slogans they chanted was “Zelensky killer of Ukrainians”.

— Karl-Olov Arnstberg

Previous translated essays by Karl-Olov Arnstberg: