Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was angered by the results of his visit to Washington in September and noted the American government’s loss of interest in Ukraine, according to an article published on October 30 in Time magazine. This is especially noteworthy since Zelensky’s visit to Washington was weeks before even more attention in Washington shifted away from Ukraine following Hamas’ attack on October 7 and Israel’s corresponding declaration of war against Gaza.
According to the article, a reporter from Time magazine went to Kiev after Zelensky’s visit to Washington in September to analyze with the Ukrainian president’s team how he reacted to the signals received from the West, especially regarding the decline of interest in a conflict without evidence of an end in sight and the constant appeals made to combat corruption in Kiev.
“On my first day in Kyiv, I asked one member of his circle how the President was feeling. The response came without a second’s hesitation: ‘Angry’,” said the article’s author.
According to the author Simon Shuster, the Ukrainian president realized that interest in Ukraine is losing strength worldwide and international support and now feels betrayed by his Western allies.
“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,” according to Shuster, who quoted one longtime member of his team as saying, “Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out”.
“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”, Shuster added.
Western media has been highlighting on a near daily basis Washington’s and Europe’s fatigue with supporting Ukraine and the erosion of support for Zelensky. Following the worsening situation in the Middle East, US President Joe Biden pledged to support Kiev and Tel Aviv. However, in October, a group of Republican senators introduced a bill that allows aid to be sent to Israel but does not include aid to Ukraine.
Shuster’s article also revealed that some front-line commanders had begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President. “They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line”. said one of Zelensky’s aides. “But we can’t win a war that way”.
The situation in some branches of the Ukrainian military has become so dire that the shortage of personnel is more desperate than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides told the journalist that even if the West delivered all the weapons they had pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them”.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on October 30 at the 10th Beijing Xiangshan Forum, “Since as recently as 4 June – that is, since the beginning of the widely publicized Ukrainian counteroffensive that has been so generously supported by the West – Kiev has lost more than 90,000 servicemen killed and wounded, about 600 tanks and almost 1,900 armored vehicles of various classes. At the same time, no tactically significant successes have been achieved on the battlefield”.
Despite multibillion-dollar foreign investment and military backing from the US, along with its European partners, Kiev has been unable to achieve any significant territorial advance. It has been consistently reported that Washington was dissatisfied with what they considered a poor war strategy by the Kiev regime. These factors have only fueled a backlash against further funding for Ukraine, which should instead be redirected to Israel, making Zelensky’s frustration even before the Middle East crisis began more revealing.
Yet, despite the catastrophic loss of life and impossibility of victory, Zelensky’s belief in overcoming Russia’s military might is only hardening. According to Shuster, Zelensky’s belief in an ultimate victory “is immovable, verging on the messianic”.
“He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides told the Time journalist. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that”.
One can only imagine how frustrated Zelensky must be now that international attention has completely shifted away from Ukraine and is now entirely focused on Israel and Gaza. It is for this reason that the Ukrainian president continually tries to link the situation in Eastern Europe to that in the Middle East and even chimed in on the recent anti-Jewish unrest that took place in Russia’s Dagestan, reportedly incited by provocateurs based in Ukraine, by saying, “This is not an isolated incident in Makhachkala, but rather part of Russia’s widespread culture of hatred toward other nations, which is propagated by state television, pundits, and authorities”.
What can be ascertained is that Zelensky is certainly deluded, which will have the unfortunate consequence of sending thousands of more Ukrainians needlessly to their deaths rather than facing the reality that Ukraine has lost territory that it will never recover due to its own widespread culture of hatred toward other nations, which is propagated by state television, pundits, and authorities, as demonstrated by the persecution of the Russian, Hungarian and other minorities in Ukraine.
