That’s because Zelensky’s speech was clearly designed to allow for several mutually contradictory interpretations: Was it an attempt to prepare the ground for, in essence, accepting the plan, even though its opponents caricature it as Ukraine’s de facto capitulation? Is the real message, on the contrary, that Zelensky will try to persuade Washington to add conditions that will sink the plan, while blaming Russia? Or is the beleaguered Ukrainian leader really just playing for time and desperately casting about for options, testing the public mood at home and reactions abroad?
Yet one thing is certain, although it was hidden in plain sight: Zelensky’s address was sensational – and that is no hyperbole – because of what he chose not to say. Namely, “no.”
Zelensky could easily have reiterated Kiev’s traditional “red lines.” Indeed, Ukraine’s UN representative has just done so. But, as the important Ukrainian publication Strana.ua noted, Zelensky did not say a word about, for instance, joining NATO. He also did not reiterate the usual refusal to surrender territory that Russia has not yet occupied.
Instead, Zelensky belabored generalities which were wide open to divergent readings and even more divergent practical applications, such as the terms of his official oath of office and the notion that Ukraine’s national interest must be taken into account. Spin 101, really.
Above all, Zelensky belabored the conveniently vague and elastic idea of “dignity.” Again and again, he reassured his audience that, no matter what happens, Ukraine and Ukrainians will preserve their dignity.
Zelensky is currently deeply embroiled in the nauseatingly sordid Energoatom corruption scandal, and this is sure to be just the tip of an iceberg of sleaze in wartime. Therefore, his invocation of a virtue he cannot possibly claim for himself and his revolting friends must have felt appallingly creepy to many of his compatriots.
But the rationale of Zelensky’s spin seems obvious enough: It is a shameless attempt to tap into the rhetoric of “dignity” traditionally deployed to re-frame the ugly combination of regime change subversion and false-flag murders that toppled the corrupt, oppressive, and unpopular yet ultimately properly elected Yanukovich regime in 2014. As we’ve moved from the so-called “revolution of dignity” to the “diplomacy of dignity,” is Ukraine finally making the compromises it needs to stop bleeding?
If so, the analogy is truer than Zelensky and his speech writers would be ready to admit: In the events of 2013/2014, there were many genuine idealists who believed they were fighting for Ukraine when challenging Yanukovich’s Ancien Regime. They were betrayed. Not by Moscow, but by the US, which incited and used their rebellion to wield it as a geopolitical weapon in a global power game.
They were also betrayed by the same pro-Western “elites” and nationalists who massacred some their own foot soldiers to create political leverage, as the Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist Ivan Katchanovsky has shown compellingly in his “The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: The Mass Killing that Changed the World.”
In a similar vein, there can be no doubt that, during the unnecessary and easily avoidable war that has now devastated Ukraine for years, many more decent men and women have been cynically sacrificed to lies told by Kiev and its Western backers: The lie that their country would join NATO; the lie that the war had not been provoked, whereas, in reality, the West had provoked Russia for two decades by breaking its word and expanding NATO, exposing Ukraine specifically by the empty yet explosive promises of the 2008 Bucharest summit; the lie that to kill and die in this war for misconceived, hubristic Western interests meant killing and dying for moral, even civilizational “values” (call that the Snyder-Applebaum Con); and the lie, last but not least, that the West would be with Ukraine “whatever it takes.”
It’s no wonder Zelensky is now seeking to distract Ukrainians with solemn phrases praising their courage and steadfastness. He can do so only because so many really have been courageous and steadfast. Yet Zelensky’s fiendish ruse consists of seeking to hide the obscene corruption of his de facto authoritarian regime behind their valor and sacrifices.
He is also desperately trying to make everyone forget one simple question: What for? Once Ukrainians lose all fear of asking that question and face its true, bitter answer, it will first stun them and then sweep Zelensky and his cronies away. Because it has all been for nothing, except the absolutely callous strategies of the West and yet more corruption and oppression at home.
Zelensky’s ambiguous speech, though, also may – may! – offer some hope. For, despite his worst intentions, his gargantuan narcissism, his profound dishonesty, his fear and greed, Ukraine’s still-leader has shown signs of perhaps finally being prepared to allow his people to escape from the meatgrinder of a war that their country very predicably could not win.
Zelensky made, for instances, references to “very hard” choices between, in effect, the plan and a terrible winter, and to steely resolve, that nonetheless has its limits, too. There even was a barely concealed rebuke of NATO-EU Europeans always baying for more Ukrainian blood while not having to send their own to die. Zelensky also pointedly declared that everything must be done to reach an end to the war and not an end to Ukraine. Under the 28-point plan, or a successor based on it, Ukraine would not cease to exist, of course. But, as Zelensky clearly, if implicitly, admitted, such an end is conceivable if peace is not made.
Zelensky also made a point of two other facts that, perhaps, point to him finally getting ready to release Ukrainians from his regime’s death grip: He insisted that Kiev will engage constructively and won’t let Moscow claim that Ukraine doesn’t want diplomacy. In other words, Zelensky promises to at least sincerely try to find peace this time. Will he keep that promise? That’s a different question again, of course. Secondly, Zelensky admitted that time is scarce and announced that Kiev will work fast. That is a clear reference to the fact that Washington has threatened to withdraw all support, including arms – even indirectly via the war-besotted EU-NATO Europeans – and (vital) intelligence within less than a week if there’s no movement. Stalling time is over, or so it seems at least.
The opponents of peace in Ukraine and the West and especially in NATO-EU Europe, the false “friends” from hell who cannot get enough of Ukrainians dying for broken Western promises and a daft attempt to cut down Russia that has already failed, are mobilizing to prevent peace. Déjà vu all over again, as a great American sage might have said.
But it is obvious that true friendship for Ukraine, the real Ukraine, with actual living human beings who should stay alive for a better future, means finally ending this catastrophe. Yes, on terms that will – to one extent or the other – reflect that Russia has the upper hand. That is the only way forward, and it is not the same as “capitulation.” It is a compromise based on reality, not on the silly dreams of vain US academics in Ukrainian embroidered shirts or German “military experts” whose link to reality seems to be about as robust as that of the German leadership huddling in a Berlin bunker in early 1945.
It’s time to stop sacrificing human beings to perverse fantasies. If – if! – Ukraine’s Zelensky has finally been compelled to accept this, then there is a chance for peace.
