Ukraine’s Zelensky Is Angry, Feels Betrayed by the West – Aides Say He’s ‘Delusional’ and His Belief Turned ‘Messianic’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is angry at the West and feels betrayed – as he tries to pull his regime together for further resistance.
Simon Schuster wrote a 3000+ word profile for Time Magazine on the wartime leader that is illuminating in so many ways, and goes much beyond the usual Western propaganda in acknowledging the realities on the ground.
Schuster had a tremendous amount of access, including with top aides that were ‘talking out of school’ – which may reveal an internal process of preparing public opinion for his replacement.
He paints Zelensky as an exhausted leader, from the demands of leadership during the war – but also ‘the persistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win’.
This bit by Kiev’s leader tells a lot about the present situation: “’Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody. […] ‘Takes all your power, your energy. You understand? It takes so much of everything. […] The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine. Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time’’.”
Schuster followed Zelensky and his team back to Kyiv, where a member of his circle described him as: “Angry.”
“The usual sparkle of his optimism, his sense of humor, his tendency to liven up a meeting in the war room with a bit of banter or a bawdy joke, none of that has survived into the second year of all-out war. ‘Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out’, says one longtime member of his team. Another tells me that, most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.[…] ‘He deludes himself’, one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. ‘We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that’.”
His vain belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory is ‘verging on the messianic’.
“Zelensky remains dead set against even a temporary truce. ‘For us it would mean leaving this wound open for future generations’”.
The Time correspondent also found out from insiders that ‘People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow’.
How does he keep attention on Ukraine, now? How does he rally the democratic world to its cause?
“’It’s logical’, Zelensky tells me. ‘Of course we lose out from the events in the Middle East. People are dying, and the world’s help is needed there to save lives, to save humanity’. Zelensky […] asked the Israeli government for permission to visit their country in a show of solidarity. The answer appeared the following week in Israeli media reports: ‘The time is not right’.”
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