Servility and Political Mimicry by Ukraine’s Pro-Western Elites as They Face Military Defeat

By Dmitri Kovalevich  –  Jan 26, 2025

Dmitri Kovalevich explores how Ukraine’s political elite bows to Western imperialism, with Zelensky mimicking Trump to maintain US favor while ordinary Ukrainians suffer under war, forced conscription, and economic ruin.

In the second half of January 2025, Ukrainians are observing how the battered country’s political and military leaders and economic elites are eager to bow to the whims of the new president of the United States and are hoping that officials of the new Trump-led administration in Washington will treat them kindly. Their rhetoric is accordingly shifting, becoming ruder and harsher as they seek to adapt and adjust to the new master of the White House. It is reminiscent somewhat of the behavior of courtiers and lackeys in France during the 17th century whenever a change of monarch was in the air.

French newspaper Le Monde noted on January 17 that Ukrainian President  Volodomyr  Zelensky (whose electoral mandate as president of coup Ukraine expired ten months ago) now imitates Trump’s foul language and mannerisms when speaking English as he flatters and compliments the new president of the United States elected in November 2024.

Zelensky used his new style in a recent interview with US podcaster Lex Fridman. The interview was directed to a largely U.S. audience and it did not go over well in Ukraine, as Zelensky frequently resorted to using foul and insulting language directed at the leaders of the Russian Federation. He also directed criticism against those in the West who would criticize his administration. His performance was something not seen before and was likely encouraged by the technocrats surrounding him, thinking that it would appeal to Trump and his handlers.

“This [the obscenities] were necessary,” Ukrainian political scientist Oleksiy Koshel affirmed to a Ukrainian news outlet on January 6. “This is actually one of the last opportunities to use media to reach Trump, his electorate, and his handlers, just two weeks before his inauguration.” But the same report also cites Koshel cautioning, “On issues of corruption, either Zelensky’s presidential team or the one that follows will need to talk to our Western partners not only in the language of emotion and slogans but also in the language of concrete steps against corruption, with an action plan backed by laws. That language will be much better received.”

Koshel also noted that Western media is reporting that Zelensky has never once thanked former US president Joseph Biden for all the military and financial assistance provided to Kiev by the Biden administration. Zelensky said on January 16 that he is ultimately disappointed with the Biden administration because of delays in weapons supplies and financing, as well as past refusals prior to the Russian military intervention begun in 2022 to tighten certain sanctions against Russia.

Ukrainian economist Oleksiy Kushch explains that representatives of aid-receiving, liberal NGOs in Ukraine operating in the sphere of the US Democratic Party are now deleting past anti-Trump posts. He says they continue to gnash their teeth against Republicans and conservatives in general, simultaneously growling and wagging their tails. “Like a dog that doesn’t know what to expect: a blow with a stick or a piece of sausage,” Kusch writes.

Ukrainian legislator Alexander Dubinsky (a former member of Zelensky’s party) wrote on Telegram on January 16 that ever since 2014, one of the key tasks of the liberal elites in Ukraine who supported past-president Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019) and then Zelensky after that has been to silence and destroy any among their elite ranks who might advocate normalization of relations with Russia. Zelensky, in his opinion, dialed up the hate to the maximum, using all the punitive mechanisms available to the Ukrainian state to squeeze out of media, politics, and business any opponents of the course that was rapidly leading to war. “Anyone who allowed himself or herself to question the suicidal nationalist course and the violent severance of cultural, economic and social ties with the Russian Federation was labeled an ‘agent of the Kremlin’ and covered in mud by a bunch of hand-me-down, foreign aid-receiving ‘patriots’.”

The Ukrainian ruling class benefits from prolonging as long as possible the military hostilities with Russia and related martial law and compulsory conscription. All this and more has made many of them rich during the past three years. But much of the Ukrainian military hierarchy is now telling legislators that it is desirable to end the war in the first half of this year. Strana.ua reports on Telegram on January 17 that legislator Anatoliy Burmich recently met with personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and was told by them in no uncertain terms that the war should end soon. He was told that military assistance from the West was inadequate for continuing to prosecute a war. Burmych expressed hope that the war would soon be ended by a compromise.

Another Ukrainian legislator, Maryana Bezuglaya, also from Zelensky’s party, writes a contrarian viewpoint on January 16. “The war will continue until one of the sides surrenders. I wish you could open this post in one year’s time and say I was wrong, but reality must be viewed with eyes wide open.”

Zelensky told a meeting in Warsaw on January 16 with displaced Ukrainians that they should ignore the politicians and other voices talking about holding national elections in Ukraine. He restated his argument voiced earlier in January that elections for the head of state and the Rada (national legislature) can only take place after the end of the ‘hot stage’ of war with Russia has finished and on condition that Ukraine is in a strong military position. He advised to “unscrew the heads of those politicians who still continue to engage in talk of elections”. Thus is revealed in ugly detail his plan to remain an unelected dictator of Ukraine, a country promoted by Western media and governments as being a ‘model of democracy’.

The Ukrainian analytical channel Rubicon on Telegram summarizes the situation, “A frankly inverted picture has developed in Ukraine. All the attributes of despotisms are introduced into Ukraine using declarations of fealty to Western values: From sealed borders to beatings of defenseless military conscripts. This leads, in turn, to cognitive dissonance in government and disruption and disorder in the entire political system.”

Tymoshenko joins the chorus
Yuliya Tymoshenko, prime minister of Ukraine from December 2007 to March 2010 and one of the leaders of the ‘color’ revolution in Ukraine during that time, is also trying to sidle up to the new US administration. In mid-January, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg canceled a planned visit to Kiev until certain issues (unnamed in media reporting) are clarified. Tymoshenko rushed to meet Kellogg in Paris, joining him at a conference of Iranian counter-revolutionaries (who have long been backed by the Western powers). There, she joined the chorus, lashing out against Iran and calling for ever-more sanctions against the country, no doubt buoyed by the recent success of the regime change war waged by the Western powers against Syria since 2011.

For her Ukrainian audience, Tymoshenko is criticizing what she rhetorically calls Ukraine’s transformation into a colony of the West. “Ukraine has become the first and only country in the world where its own constitutional court is composed of unknown international players,” she laments.

Putin: Without Western Money, the Ukraine Conflict Will End in a Month and a Half

Tymoshenko cannot deny the dependent and subordinate status that has been voluntarily accepted by the ruling elite of Ukraine that came to power in the coup of February 2014. She was an enthusiastic supporter of the coup, but today reads well the negative mood in the country towards the war with Russia. Hence her adoption of rhetoric purportedly criticizing the sad evolution of events since 2014 through which Ukraine has become a vassal of the Western powers.

Coup Ukraine as a vassal of Britain
On the eve of Trump’s inauguration, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hurriedly arrived in Kiev to conclude a ‘100-year pact’ of assistance to Ukraine. The very name ‘100-year pact’ causes a great deal of skeptical comments in Ukrainian society because people here are entirely unsure about tomorrow. Any talk of ‘plans’ for the next 100 years can only bring forth a chuckle. Commentators in Ukraine recall the mutual aid treaty agreed between Great Britain and Poland in March 1939. That treaty did nothing to help Poland a mere six months later when Germany invaded and World War II began.

Warsaw was liberated from Nazi occupation in January 1945, but not by the British army or those of its Western allies. The city was liberated by the Red Army of the Soviet Union and allied partisan forces in Poland. The liberation cost some 100,000 lives of the Red Army and allied Polish forces.

Ukrainian political scientist and historian Kost Bondarenko commented on January 16 about this newest agreement between Kiev and the government in London. “Regarding the signing of this ‘100-year agreement’ between Ukraine and Great Britain, I can say as a historian that nothing is more short-term than ‘100-year’ or ‘eternal’ treaties. Imagine that Britain had signed a certain treaty with a certain country 100 years ago, in early 1925. Since that time, Britain has had five monarchs and 24 prime ministers, survived World War II and seven economic crises, lost most of its remaining colonies, and ceased to be an empire. Are there any treaties signed by London in 1925 or before that have not lost their relevance?”

In the new agreement, Britain pledges to provide Ukraine with military assistance in 2025 equivalent to US$6.6 billion and $3 billion equivalent each year after that “for as long as necessary”. In exchange, British investors ate to secure a status of ‘preferred investment partners’ in Ukraine’s energy industry, extraction of essential minerals, and ‘environmentally friendly’ steel production, according to the Ukrainian weekly magazine Dzerkalo Tyzhnya. The magazine cites Ukraine’s ambassador to London Valeriy Zaluzhnyy as a source. He is the former commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Here in plain view, one sees the plans by capitalists in Britain to take over Ukrainian minerals and natural resources.

The British government will also study the possibility of placing military bases and other military infrastructure in Ukraine. Zelensky announced further on January 15that the ‘100-year’ agreement with the UK contains secret clauses. Zelensky’s words were received with bewilderment in Ukraine because, as usual, he and his administration have not disclosed the content of such secret clauses.

Former Ukrainian legislator and radical nationalist Igor Mosiychuk claims that Ukraine is becoming a vassal of a new, hoped-for British Empire. “Do you know who created the original British Empire, friends?”, he writes. “It was the East India Trading Company, which siphoned resources from India and other colonies in order to nourish the island of Britain. It now seems that the ‘East India Company’ is rising from the dead, with its tentacles reaching for the natural energy resources of our motherland. Having broken out of economic and political dependence on Moscow, Zelensky is preparing Ukrainians to kiss the boots of a new master.”

The Telegraph newspaper in Britain reported on January 17 that the British government is also now discussing the formation of a special regiment of Ukrainians in the British army. Such an initiative would assist London in gaining returns from its military aid to Kiev and, conveniently, it would help solve the recruitment crisis of the British army. A parallel is now being drawn with the ‘Gurkhas’ (ethnic Nepalis) who served in the British colonial army and took an active part in suppressing past, anti-colonial revolts in India.

In fact, the Ukrainians now being forcibly conscripted may be viewed as analogous to the colonial troops that France and Britain always used extensively in European and colonial wars during the 19th and 20th centuries, Africans and Indians, among many others, were cajoled or kidnapped into British military units and thrown into the trenches.

Forcibly conscripted Ukrainians have already deserted from military training camps in France. Perhaps the military authorities in Western countries will block future desertions by encircling their training camps for Ukrainians with barbed wire?

Ukraine’s comprador elite against Ukrainians
The Ukrainian political elite has always been famous for its skills in mimicry. Many started out as Soviet functionaries, then became pro-Russian politicians. Today, most are flirting with far-right Ukrainian nationalism and neo-Nazism. More than coincidentally, Zelensky is a mimic and comedian by profession. The dictionary definition explains that “a comedian is someone who entertains audiences using many techniques, one of which is mimicry and impression.”

Ukrainian publicist Serhiy Datsyuk says the Ukrainian elite has done nothing but plunder the country’s people and resources for the past 30 years, and Ukrainians are beginning to recognize this across the board. He writes, “It is very difficult to destroy half of the country’s population in 30 years, but we managed. This shows that we Ukrainians don’t need Ukraine, and therefore no one else needs it, either. Our elite has robbed the country of resources and infrastructure and did not give a damn about the people.” In his opinion, it is pointless to ‘save’ Ukraine under Western tutelage because the country is in freefall and there is nothing left to save in such a format. The creation of external enemies, that is, the ‘Russians’, has been just another excuse for the authorities to relieve themselves of responsibility.

In January, a statement by Vitaliy Portnikov, a well-known Ukrainian journalist and a columnist of the US-funded Radio Liberty, emphasized the class division of society which has only intensified during the war. His words resonated widely in Ukrainian society. According to him, the very essence of a Western-inspired ‘democratic’ society is that the poor should perish while the rich should prosper.

“Now we are hearing from the people that legislators should go to war and only then will they, the people, go too. No, people, you don’t understand. This is a ‘democratic’ state, and in such a state, the lot of the common man is to die for his country. If we want aristocrats to die for the state, we must recognize this feudal country and then act as occurred during the Great French Revolution.”

Earlier Ukrainian nationalists in their ideological works divided Ukrainians into ‘warriors’, of which they considered themselves to be a part, and ‘sheep’, in the form of ordinary workers and farmers. This ideology was the cornerstone that underlay the pro-Western desires of Ukrainian nationalists to rule the country. However, the realities of the clash with the Russian army are leading to a revision of these basic attitudes. The nationalist, pro-Western ‘warrior’ elite is afraid to be at the front. It prefers to attack the Russian army using the bodies and lives of forcibly conscripted farmers and other disenfranchised.

The Western media is nothing but cynical before this reality. It admires the ‘heroism’ of Ukrainians. But in their vast numbers, Ukrainians no longer wish to fight and are trying to flee from the concentration camp that their armed forces and the entire country have become. In a grim irony (and tragedy), Western countries are now supplying Ukrainian border guards with modern drones to track and catch fugitives at the country’s borders seeking real freedom… by fleeing a country that has become little more than a warmaking vassal of Western imperialism.

 

(Al Mayadeen – English)