Alexander Häfner

Zelensky won the 2019 election by a landslide, securing over 73% of the vote, the highest margin of any previous presidential candidate. He was an appealing candidate as he was a political outsider with a populist agenda. I believe that many Ukrainians saw in him a typical Ukrainian citizen, one who understood the historical blood ties & geographical realities without sacrificing the path to a European future. His central campaign promises were to end the endemic corruption, bring peace with Russia & resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, promising to “do everything” for a ceasefire, including a dialogue with Russia & implementing the Minsk agreements. He also promised economic reforms to improve living standards, usher in a direct democracy & return power to the people of Ukraine. Any reasonable person should now be able to see just how epically he failed on delivering on those promises. Blaming Russia won’t quite stand up to scrutiny as his approval ratings plummeted to 27% prior to 2022. As we are fortunate to live in a digital age & with Zelensky being a public figure we can look back at what he had to say in his own words well before he chose to enter politics as well as when he was campaigning. In the third video he states in newly learned Ukrainian “I turned to Putin and said: I am ready to get on my knees, just do not put Ukraine on her knees. I am now ready to get on my knees before every mother who did not wait for her son to return from the front. I am ready to kneel before every wife who did not wait for her husband. I am ready to kneel before every child who waited but never saw their father return.” There aren’t enough lifetimes for him to get off his knees at this point. To come back to my previous posts, prior to meeting Zelensky, Putin said this “It’s one thing to play someone & another to be someone. Obviously, acting requires talent. Many talents. One of these talents is impersonation. You can change your role every ten minutes. The prince & the pauper - every 10 minutes, & you have to be convincing in every role. This is really a talent.” … he then proceeded to list the qualities needed to be an effective leader & finished with this “I am not saying that Mr Zelensky lacks these qualities; he very well may possess them. There may be a lack of experience, but experience, as people say, can be gained, it comes quickly. Does he have all the other qualities that I mentioned? He very well may have, but I do not know as he has not shown them in any way so far. But what we see is contradictory statements: he says one thing during the election campaign, & another thing afterward. Time will tell. We will see.” When they met in person in Normandy, Putin followed through on what he said before they met, that he wasn’t outright dismissing him due to his inexperience & initial flip flopping, he was open to having real dialogue & finding solutions. Zelensky’s head of office at the time, who was present for these conversations, emphasized that Putin was respectful & tried to find common ground to resolve issues but instead of taking the opportunity to deliver on what got him elected, Zelensky promised one thing but did nothing. This reaffirmed Putin’s initial observations of Zelensky saying one thing during the election campaign & a completely different thing after. Of course I am well aware that when it comes to this war, what led up to it & whether it could have been avoided, it’s not black & white. It’s complex, multifaceted, brimming with nuance, & cannot be oversimplified. There are people on both sides suffering from such severe cognitive dissonance that they are no longer capable of considering any narrative that challenges their position, even minimally. These posts aren’t for them. They are for those who are still capable of critical thinking even when it’s uncomfortable. As Putin said, “time will tell, we will see.” Time has now passed. I know what I see, but I’m curious as to what others see.

The hard truth many do not want to admit: The longer this goddamn Russian war drags on, the more people in Ukraine die. Period. Full stop. Every single one of the laptop warriors screaming that Ukriane meeds to continue the war — while safe in their European capitals or American think tanks — would never, ever actually live in the country they’re so eager to keep bleeding. Not for a second. Look at Kaja Kallas — the Estonian prime minister turned EU foreign policy chief. She struts around with this giant Napoleon complex, wrapped in the flag of “defending democracy in Ukraine.” Give me a break. This has nothing to do with Ukrainian sovereignty or freedom. It’s about racking up political points on the corpse of a country. She’s betting on the image of democratic Zelensky, which is already crumbling because the reality on the ground has less and less to do with actual democracy. These people don’t care about Ukrainians. They care about their own status, their media profiles, and their pathetic little power games. Every heroic speech they give costs another hundred lives and another chunk of Ukraine’s future. The cold reality? The only victory Ukraine can still achieve right now is to end this war, stop the slaughter, and start rebuilding — the economy, the institutions, whatever is left of real democracy. Everything else is just cynical, blood-soaked grift by people who will never pay the price themselves. The dead Ukrainian kids, the ruined cities, the destroyed families — that’s not a price the West is paying. It’s a price Ukraine is paying so that politicians in Warsaw, Tallinn, and Brussels can feel important. Enough. Time to stop pretending this is noble. It’s grotesque. And the longer it goes, the more obvious it becomes.