ZELENSKY, AUTHOR OF HIS OWN DEMISE… AND JUST POSSIBLY OF HIS ENTIRE NATION

With Zelensky's regime foundering, Kiev riven by rumours of plots of a coup, Russia continues making steady gains, destroying the Ukrainian army in the process. The end for Zelensky is in sight.

What we have seen from the Ukrainian president in his constant interference in Ukrainian battle plans has more to do with theatre for the western powers' consumption than valid battle tactics. (The correspondence with the interference by Adolf Hitler in WWII is worthy of some attention.)

The western powers control the purse strings, without the financial support of western nations the entire edifice of Ukrainian opposition to Russia crumbles and falls. Therefore, Zelensky, almost since the very start of this conflict has been concerned with making a show of things for the westerners. However, his ability to make any kind of show of things is fast reducing. His options are far fewer now.

The barefaced lies of previous times won't prove effective now. Russia is fast gaining total ascendancy right across the battlefront and not only there. The Russian economy is robust and expanding, more and more nations are showing just how much they trust Russia as an ally as opposed to the USA and others in the West who have proven to be the most fickle of friends and who are now very little short of being seen as outright enemies.

Zelensky can do nothing. The die is set for him. He cannot relent and allow negotiations. If he does this the Nazi-mentality extremists in Ukraine will find a way to off him and perhaps his whole family. He knows this. So he cannot do what is necessary. But also he appears unwilling to let go of power. Therefore, he MUST be removed by one means or another... before Ukraine ceases to be a viable state in any form.

The end is coming for Zelensky, one way or another, and perhaps for the very existence of the nation known by the name Ukraine.

It may well be that Zelensky had no other decent cards to play. Elected on a platform of bringing peace to the conflict in eastern Ukraine he almost immediately betrayed all who had voted for him. The events which persuaded him to do this may one day be known, however to this day we do not know them. Most likely he was told in no uncertain terms by the most bloodthirsty ideological militants in western Ukraine that to do so would bring his speedy demise. It is difficult to see what other factors, other than, as we have perennially seen through the conflict, the influence of the Americans and their chief ally, Britain.

Zelensky must surely have known he was on a hiding to nothing no matter WHICH way he jumped. The safest option in those early months of his presidency when faced with very real threats against his life was to abandoned all thoughts of being a peacemaker and get in line with all the voices stridently advocating more war. From that time to since he has not varied from a stance of some fantastical and absolutist victory over Russia. This will have pleased the most bloodthirsty and hateful but ultimately it will seal his demise. The Ukrainian army, no matter how much weaponry they received from western sponsors was NEVER going to defeat a Russia fighting for its security in the face of not only the nATO threat, not only the desire of western Neocons to weaken it and carve it up, but also from a belligerent next door neighbour that included as its most influence, a vast mass of Nazi-mentality militants swearing avowed allegiance with actual Nazis of WWII.

It can be seen that Zelensky is in the unenviable position of being between the veritable rock and a hard place. You may say, why didn’t he simply resign the presidency when he saw it was a poisoned chalice, drop out of politics altogether and go back to being a comic actor and entertainer. Why not indeed. But this overlooks what must have been immense pressures for him to stay the course. An entire political party now looked to him to lead them, many of them his colleagues from his career in television. Was he to simply abandon them and the party that depended upon him as its figurehead. No, quitting and trying to regain his former life was a forlorn enterprise that he is bound to have recognised as such.

But the end is nigh as they say. His peak of popularity across the western world peaked many months ago now. Now he traipses across the world as a lonely and rather forlorn creature, with his political peers finding him more and more of an embarrassment and not the “hero” he was made out to be not so long ago. Success is attractive, abject failure is most decidedly not. Ukraine’s pre-lauded summer offensive achieved extremely little at the cost of more than one hundred thousand Ukrainian lives. Those minuscule gains are now being swallowed up again by a Russian army incrementally moving forward. Zelensky has nothing, or very close to nothing, to crow about. His exhortation to the Ukrainian army to take 500 metres every day was a sick joke on the day he demanded it and an even sicker joke now.

Zelensky is essentially a dead man walking. He is dead but not quite ready to lie down. All around him are intrigues and mysterious deaths. And his time for disappearing from the stage of history is surely coming, after which he will appear as a historical footnote accounting for his brief rise and precipitous fall, almost Shakespearean in its tragic nature but all too readily associated with the folly that comes with every theatrical farce.