Zelensky morphs from Ukraine’s Churchill to NATO’s Persona Non Grata

 Zelensky morphs from Ukraine’s Churchill to NATO’s Persona Non Grata

 

In late 2022 Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was heralded by the US and NATO as the ‘Ukrainian Winston Churchill’. His youthful persona and steadfastness in playing Ukraine’s David to Russia’s Goliath in the US/NATO promoted proxy war with Russia was right out of central casting. Zelensky was the perfect counterpoint to the evil caricature the US and NATO portrayed Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

 

Zelensky represented the perfect US patsy to fight Russia without risking a single US soldier. We gifted him with over $150 billion in weapons, pushing the combined NATO total over $200 billion.

 

But Zelensky was stupid enough to believe the US hype he could prevail with NATO weapons but not one drop of NATO blood. He became increasingly delusional, demanding to join NATO and fighting on to regain every square mile of lost Eastern Ukraine land.

 

Neither will ever happen. Ukraine and its US/NATO sponsors utterly misjudged Russia’s insistence on forever ending NATO expansion and destroying the people and culture of Russian leaning Ukrainians in the Donbas region.

 

Ukraine essentially lost the war on Day One, but Zelensky refuses to negotiate an honorable outcome that recognizes both Russian security objectives. After nearly three and a half years, both the US and European NATO are ready to dump the proxy war ruining European NATO economies besides now basket case Ukraine.

 

In the US, Trump has been disparaging Zelensky’s stubbornness thruout his second term. Trump is moving on. He knows the war is lost, and US weapons are more sorely needed for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and to prepare for war with China over its Far East expansionism. Both take precedence over the lost war in Ukraine he blames on predecessor Biden. His reversal of last week’s announcement there would be no more weapons for Ukraine is just theater. Saying he will now “send some defensive weapons” is virtually meaningless.

 

The US/NATO hammer on Zelensky was on full display at the recent Hague NATO summit. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte threw cold water on Zelensky’s endless demand for NATO membership. Rutte put it nicely, “Of course, I cannot disclose anything about the summit declaration” (regarding NATO membership). NATO membership for Ukraine was, for the first time, not even on the summit agenda.

 

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio even ruled out further Russian sanctions in the near future because they might jeopardize negotiations leading to a ceasefire.

 

Unlike previous summits, this one proposed no new specific weapons for Ukraine, simply referencing NATO’s pledge to boost military spending to 5% of GDP. Nor did it assign sole blame for the war to Russia.

 

Most ominous of all for NATO rescuing Zelensky’s burned up bacon is their statement that support for Ukraine is based on “enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine, whose security contributes to ours.” Use of the word sovereign implies that each of NATO’s 32 members, not a united NATO, are free to provide aid to Ukraine or not. That represents a huge NATO pullback from the lost proxy war achieving nothing but a destroyed Ukraine and a strengthened Russia.

 

The Hague NATO summit’s view of Volodymyr Zelensky is now reminiscent of Sen. Lloyd Benston’s rebuke of George H.W. Bush’s VP candidate Dan Quayle during their 1988 debate: ‘We knew Winston Churchill….you (Zelensky) are no Winton Churchill.’