ZELENSKY'S TAKES, STAKES AND MISTAKES

It seems Zelensky. . . 

- Was unable to think it through what the US elections--specifically, the Democrats' predictable weakening and the apparently unstoppable / unstopped re-emergence of Creep1 and his neo-fascist agenda, strongly aligned with Putin on the global scene--and the overall fatigue of US and west European populations' support for the war--would mean for Ukraine.

- He seems to believe he actually has sovereignty 1: He seems to think what he says goes. A mistake.

- He seems to believe he actually has sovereignty 2: He fails to realize he has no control over foreign intel operations in his country.

- His advisors seem to be drunk on Ukraine's early PR successes and seem content in assuming that daily geopolitics equals damn lies. (It is of course not about plain truth, for sure, but it may be slightly more complicated than that.)

- He seems to have assumed that the widely practiced semantic shift of the international media (screaming "Russian" instead of Soviet) carries over to describing the model and make of the missile that has hit Poland--i.e., manipulating space and time periods so that Soviet-era missiles, which are clearly in use in both the Russian and Ukrainian armies, would be mapped automatically on today's Russian Army--will fool the Polish-US-British-etc. military experts automatically to incriminate the Russian Federation.  That is a big mistake, assuming that the slips and distortions fed to the world's population by the media is the same as the professionals' opinion.

-  By vigorously denying the possibility that the rocket might have come from Ukraine, he is rejecting the generous face-saving offer on part of the western media that automatically claim that it was an accident and elegantly avoid asking "cui prodest", ergo won't examine the possibility of an act of deliberate provocation. In doing so, he is weakening his own case politically, at least in the long run. Unable to offer an explanation of just why the western alliance would reject the possibility of a Russian attack so unanimously--unless they are convinced that it wasn't--he has just maneuvered himself in a tight corner. And that will come at a cost, quite soon. At a minimum, it is a reasonable idea to propose a strikingly sharp explanation for what happened--explanations that contradict all of one's allies--only if one has strong evidence in support of that explanation. Otherwise, caution is advised.

- It is also slightly difficult to imagine that the trajectory of a missile crossing into Nato territory in Poland would not be reconstructed relatively soon. And if it is, the result of that inquiry might undermine the certainty with which the Ukrainian position rejects the possibility that the missile might have come from Ukraine. In fact, judging from the firmness and unanimity of Nato's discursive position (denying Russian involvement), I am pretty sure that is already the case.

- Sort of the flipside of the previous point--Zelensky's insistence that what hit Poland was a "Russian" missile, fired by the Russian Army into Poland, begs a few questions that I, for one, can't find any reasonable answers to. E.g., How come Polish air defense did not see a missile coming if it was fired from such a distance as Russia's positions from the Polish border? And, more fundamental, How drawing Poland, and Nato, more deeply into the conflict would be in the interest of the Russian aggressor? Unfortunately it is the point where the media reports about Zelensky's position seem to fade out, nobody is asking Zelensky this question. Leaving that question out, the international media, as they routine do, offend the intelligence of just about everybody who has read at least one crime investigation story in which the detective raises the question of motive. I'm afraid the reply that "the Russians are just insane" is just not going cut it. 

- It is also possible to imagine that someone in the Ukrainian leadership had misread the analogies of the "false flag" attack scenarios like the Tonkin incident or the "weapons of mass destruction" narrative, and failed to realize that Ukraine might not, or not so easily, get away with what the US could, and has. 

- He seems to have been overcome by panic upon seeing the US-Russian rapprochement, especially the summit between the two intelligence agencies, that Ukraine was left out of. Add to that what he could not have foreseen, i.e., the easing of US-China tensions after the Xi-Biden meeting in Bali. It is always very unpleasant to realize that big players will negotiate about your future above your head. Welcome to the world of the political dependency of the small-to-midsize states of the periphery. With its collapsing economy, bleeding population (in more ways than one), staggering war damage to infrastructure and a per capita GDP below 50% of the world mean even before the war, Ukraine is very unlikely to attain the position of global weight and the attendant "respect" that its government seems to expect / assume. 

. . . And, then, we haven't even seen the far reaching, quite possibly catastrophic, consequences of the fire sale of some of Ukraine's key economic assets, a process that ensures that Ukraine will never have a fighting chance to become a full member of the EU, at least not in the lifetime of anyone alive now, for whatever that membership would be worth--not even in the optimistic scenario that the EU actually survives the winter of 2022-23, which appears rather doubtful at the moment.

I can totally see that much of this is a Greek tragedy, and not (only) Zelensky's personal weakness or fault. I used his name in the title because, as it turns out, he speaks for the state of Ukraine at the moment. 

Anyway, my point is that many of these things have to do with the structural conditions that exist. . . 

- in Ukraine, 

- the post-Soviet space, 

- in the post-state-socialist parts of the world,

- in the EU and in the US, and 

- in the world overall.

In that regard, his government's mistake is not recognizing the structural conditions under which it operates. Of course such recognition is probably an unreasonably huge thing to expect in the middle of a war, literally under the enemy bombs. 

Anyway--this last week will not be remembered fondly in Ukraine's history.