Ukrainian "President" Volodymyr Zelensky, with collages of soldiers and a war-ravaged locality in the background. Illustration: Mahdi Rteil/Al-Mayadeen English.
By Dmitri Kovalevich – May 30, 2025
Zelensky’s presidency, once seen as a hope for peace, has instead deepened conflict, extended authoritarian rule, and aligned Ukraine with Western geopolitical goals, leaving the nation fractured and disillusioned.
Six years ago, on May 20, 2019, Ukraine inaugurated a new president who had defeated by a large margin the incumbent Petro Poroshenko, elected in May 2014. That election occurred barely three months following the coup that ousted Ukraine’s elected and constitutional president, Viktor Yanukovych, and its national legislature.
Poroshenko is one of the richest men in Ukraine. His five-year presidential term firmly placed Ukraine on the global map as a hostile, ‘anti-Russia’ at the service of the Western powers.
Following the 2019 election campaign, the candidate who became president, Volodomyr Zelensky, continued the radical, ethnic nationalism of his predecessor, Poroshenko, even though Zelensky’s election campaign had deceptively suggested that he would end the bloody civil war being waged by Kiev against the people of Donbass since 2014. He hinted he would end the political and cultural repression of pro-Soviet Ukrainians, which was fast becoming generalized in post-coup Ukraine.
Not long after the votes were counted in April 2019, it became clear that the political course laid down by Western embassies during and since the 2014 Euromaidan coup would remain unchanged. Zelensky gradually changed his rhetoric to resemble that of his billionaire predecessor.
A turning point noted by analysts at the time was Zelensky’s visit to London in October 2020 with British intelligence chief Richard Moore. There, dire warnings of ‘Russian interference and aggression’ were relayed to Zelensky by the British official, who reportedly received a sympathetic ear. Eighteen months later, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a special visit to Zelensky in Istanbul in order to sabotage peace talks underway with the Russian Federation. The peace talks were initially positive, but Johnson’s sabotage succeeded.
A ‘president’ with no electoral legitimacy
Zelensky’s term of office expired in April 2024, but more than one year later, he shows no sign of resigning or convening an election. The Ukrainian constitution stipulates elections every five years to the presidency and the legislature (Rada). Zelensky’s political image has undergone significant changes during the past six years.
Prior to 2019, Zelensky was a popular comedian and actor. Today, he is a warmaking president who sees conspiracies against him everywhere. Ukraine’s secret police agency faithfully and regularly publicizes alleged ‘conspiracies’ against him (for the sake of their career prospects).
Power in capitalist states corrupts those who wield it, and for Zelensky, military action against Russia and a claimed need for mass political repression inside the country have become an excuse not only to prolong his rule but also to maximize a concentration of power. Western politicians and mass media have fully encouraged him along an authoritarian path of usurpation of power under the pretext of ‘defending democracy’. However, this pretext is not ‘democracy’ as a fundamental structure of society. Rather, it is used as a tool of power, wielded by authoritarians appropriating the term ‘democrat’ as a kind of trademark for themselves.
A leading figure of the Euromaidan coup of late 2013/early 2014, former Rada legislator Igor Mosiychuk, today compares the behavior of Kyiv’s Western allies to the behavior of looters during a brawl. “Do you know what they remind me of? When two neighbors fight until they bleed, break each other’s arms, and set each other’s house on fire. Other neighbors then shout ‘Put out the fire, stop the fight!’, but at their first opportunity, they run into the house in order to steal everything of value. These are the kind of Western partners we have,” says the now-disillusioned Ukrainian nationalist.
Mosiychuk lives in exile in Europe. On May 25, Zelensky announced new sanctions against him and others deemed to “threaten the interests of Ukraine.”
Six years ago, Zelensky said that he was not afraid of losing his ratings and power as long as people did not needlessly suffer and die. He even promised respect for the language and cultures of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine, a lowering of some taxes, and improvements to social services and pensions. However, during his past six-plus years in power, Zelensky has rarely even visited Ukraine outside of Kiev. His recorded video messages to the population of the country are usually produced abroad.
Much travel abroad for the ‘Zelensky project’
Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported on May 17 that during his presidency, Zelensky has visited 134 countries. Germany has been the most frequent destination, at 11 times, followed by France at ten and the United States at nine.
Since the beginning of 2025, Zelensky has made 23 trips abroad to 18 countries, reports the newspaper. In 2025 alone, he has made 23 trips to 18 countries and states. Such an emphasis on foreign trips is a sign of Ukraine’s deteriorating independence and of Zelensky’s alienation from his own country. This is a man who wishes that his homeland were other than Ukraine and that his residence were somewhere in London.
There is another reason for Zelensky’s constant tours, and that is the Western powers and their ‘Zelensky project’, whereby the man, the cause he espouses, and the tears he sheds before the cameras are used to split the countries of the Global South away from the influence of Russia and China and return at least some of them ‘to the fold’ of subordination to the West.
Former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine, Alexei Arestovych, says that Zelensky’s public relations handlers are continuing an anti-Russian course, thereby condemning so many Ukrainians to death on the battlefields and risking death to the country as a whole. According to Arestovych, many in Ukraine are now hoping for a dreamscape option according to which the Western powers decide to ‘wake up’ and directly join the fighting against Russia. “This is the Zelensky regime’s last hope for keeping its hands over the eyes of the people of Ukraine and preventing them from seeing what lies before the country. It is a last hope because after that, only naked reality remains to be seen, and this is unbearable for many.”
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An insoluble conflict?
Legislator Aleksander Dubinsky, a former member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, believes that the main goal of Zelensky and his European masters is to turn the war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation into an insoluble ethnic conflict that becomes eternal. However, he is certain that Zelensky and the rabid, ethnic nationalists who surround him are already a thing of the past. Almost no one in Ukraine is betting on their futures.
Dubinsky believes that Zelensky and the ultra-nationalists surrounding him have plenty of troubling warning signs ahead: popular anger over dashed hopes for peace, or at least a lessening of tensions, with Russia following the 2019 election; contempt for Zelensky’s theatrical narcissism; humiliations suffered by the Ukrainian military; and anger by soldiers who who have been beaten and humiliated while risking their lives against their will with a great many losing their lives. All these factors could explode in Ukraine with a new outbreak of violence, a kind of revenge for everything hateful and destructive that has happened since 2014.
Dubinsky’s former colleague, legislator Artem Dmitruk, who has fled to London and resides there, calls May 20, 2019 (the date of Zelensky’s inauguration) the day when hope began to turn into catastrophe. “Nobody could have imagined that everything would end like this… That we would find our country on the brink of extinction; that death would become commonplace; that murders committed in basements or on the streets would become the norm; that hysteria would replace common sense; that ignorance would become a privilege and truth would become a crime.” That is how the former ‘Servant of the People’ apparatchik sums up the results of the six-year rule of his former boss.
According to Dubinsky, it is urgently needed to draw conclusions from the national tragedy being experienced. He warns, in particular, against any kind of theatrical showcasing when choosing future political leaders.
A former employee of the Ukrainian embassy in the United States, political scientist Andrey Telizhenko, has recently projected that a new Ukrainian politician to replace Zelensky will sign a peace agreement with the Russian Federation this year. “This war will continue until the end of the year. At some point, a ‘neutral’ government may come to power, and Zelensky will no longer be there. A temporary government will be formed, and an agreement will be reached between Washington and Moscow to end the conflict. Following that, a new peace process may begin,” he predicts.
According to positive forecasts now being aired in or around the country, Ukraine will be cleansed of neo-Nazi formations, a political opposition will take part in an election process provided safety can be assured all around, and many citizens will return home to participate and vote once they feel it is safe to do so.
Prisoner exchanges are more than they appear
The number of political prisoners being detained in Ukraine is still unknown, but the authorities report daily the detention or arrest of people being accused of ‘treason’. These include anti-fascists, Ukrainians who honor their grandfathers who died in the ranks of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, and any and all public critics of Zelensky.
Added to that are businessmen and other people of property who these days find themselves arrested by Ukrainian special police services, and their property is then confiscated. Ransoms are demanded in exchange for the cancellation of arrests.
During the halting peace talks that took place in Istanbul earlier this month, Ukraine and Russia agreed to exchange prisoners, 1,000 on each side. Kiev demanded a ‘one-for-one’ exchange. However, there are far fewer Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine compared to Ukrainian soldiers imprisoned in Russia.
The Russian army has been steadily advancing in recent months; it is mainly Ukrainians who are being captured and taken prisoner. It turns out that Ukrainian authorities are including civilian dissidents disloyal to the Zelensky regime among their ‘Russian prisoners of war’ in the prisoner exchanges. “On the eve of the largest prisoner exchange to date of ‘1,000 for 1,000’, pretrial detention centers in Ukraine began to fill up with prisoners accused of ‘treason’, ‘separatism’, ‘collaborationism’ and other similar political charges. These prisoners were then used in the prisoner-of-war exchange,” reports the Ukrainian online publication Strana on May 20.
Those whom Kiev is offering to exchange for its captured soldiers include businessmen, youth caught taking photos or video of military facilities (strictly forbidden under Ukraine’s martial law regime), people setting fire to the vehicles of military recruiters, and people who were simply set up or betrayed under accusations of ‘pro-Russian’ views or sympathies.
Finding fault for Ukraine’s crisis
Ukrainian political scientist Oleg Yasinsky writes from Chile that the project implemented in Ukraine has aimed at weakening Russia, if not altogether destroying the Russian Federation’s unity, pure and simple. He argues that the project arose long before 2022, even before 2014. According to him, “roles and masks” are now changing, but the Ukrainian state, which has allowed itself to be used in the anti-Russia project, has been “eaten, swallowed and digested by the global corporate power long ago, polluting the political landscape with what is left over”.
According to him, what remains in Ukraine is a desecrated territory, a destroyed people, and a heartless money-making plan that neither Donald Trump nor companies such as BlackRock will be able to realize.
We Ukrainians share blame for the unfolding disaster, according to Yasinsky. “When our tragedy was being drawn up and calculated in advance, many of us clearly saw it, but we lacked the courage, wisdom, or simply the right words to stop the rush into the abyss,” he says.
The most urgent task today, writes Yasinsky, is to use all available means to raise the consciousness of the people of the Western countries upon which Ukraine still depends to wage war. He says what is needed is not “rallies for peace” but mass disobedience and “burning of the military factories in Borrell’s garden.” (Here, Yasinsky is referring to the racist words of EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell in 2022 when he compared Europe to a “garden” and called the rest of the world a “jungle”.)
Six years of Zelensky’s rule—five years following a stunted presidential election, followed by a one-year-and-counting usurpation of power—has shown Ukrainians that words pronounced in the halls of power in the West mean nothing. If earlier, the rule of Ukrainian presidents at least somewhat correlated with their program and promises, the rule of Zelensky’s regime displays a complete, 180-degree turn, cynically masked by the man’s tears and hysterics.
Ukraine will soon get out of this war and be rid of Zelensky. But the same deception of voters, encouraged and incited by the West, will linger. Indeed, the same deceptions are being tested on citizens of other countries. They, too, are being called upon to sacrifice for the sake of maintaining Western capitalist hegemony. Those among them with a heart and a soul will resist and join with others to chart a path to a different future, one of social justice and respect, and equality between peoples. This cannot come soon enough.
Dmitri Kovalevich
Dmitri Kovalevich is a Ukrainian Communist, member of the organization Borotba. He is the special correspondent in Ukraine for Al Mayadeen English.
