Ukraine has a new butcher-in-chief – all the better to feed Ukrainians to the grinder

Syrsky is gone, but his replacement is a sign that Zelensky as committed as ever to prolonging a losing war at terrible human cost The rule of Vladimir Zelensky has been a catastrophe for Ukraine, and that is how it will be remembered once the dust of relentless info war campaigns in his favor – and against his critics – settles. While the corruption of the Zelensky regime is stupendous , that fact – sad as it is – is not what makes him special, however. Because exorbitant, shameless embezzlement, kickbacks, and fraud have been the Ukrainian establishment’s perverse normal since independence. Zelensky and his cronies are certain to have cashed in like no one before because the West has pumped in money as never before while turning two blind eyes to what happens to it. But in principle, Zelensky has merely done what they all do. Not that that makes it any better. Zelensky’s truly distinct contribution to Ukraine’s misery has consisted in two other things. His unprecedented ramping-up of authoritarianism – begun long before the escalation of the war in 2022 – and his merciless choice to relentlessly sacrifice his country and its people to serve as cannon fodder in a Western proxy war against Russia. Zelensky’s responsibility before his country is all the greater because he once either knew better or he lied. During his 2019 election campaign, when he generally “avoided serious interviews and discussions about policy – preferring instead to post light-hearted videos to social media,” as the BBC back then was still ready to report, the comedian-on-the-way-to-the-presidency made one and only one specific promise: that he understood the absolute priority of peace and would do everything to find a negotiated solution with Russia. Read more Zelensky fires top Ukrainian General Syrsky And then in the spring of 2022, Zelensky, of course, deliberately missed a golden opportunity to end the large-scale war when it had barely begun.

Heeding not Ukraine’s obvious national interest but duplicitous advice from the West’s emissary, then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Zelensky personally ditched an almost finished peace agreement , locking in years of devastation for his country. In the end, once the war will be fully lost, Kiev is virtually certain to get a deal much worse than what was on offer then. Now, in the summer of 2026, it may seem as if Zelensky’s grip on Ukraine is finally slipping. A combination of street protests and – inevitable if quiet – Western pressure has forced him into a humiliating climb-down. After the president’s sudden dismissal of the popular – and much-hyped – defense minister Mikhail Fedorov, the protesters had demanded his re-instatement and the sacking of Fedorov’s rival, the military’s commander-in-chief Aleksandr ‘the Butcher’ Syrsky. Zelensky has now fired Syrsky to be replaced by General Mikhail Drapaty, while some new influential position for Fedorov is being discussed. Boris Johnson, currently a more-than-usual washed-out has-been of British politics, busy trying to catch the public eye, has made meager headlines with blaming the Ukraine War on the Britain’s new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband . How is that supposed to work? Somehow via Syria. Yes, really. The single most important cause of this perfectly avoidable war was of course the West’s reckless policy of NATO expansion. And the man who helped most directly to make the war go on when it could have ended quickly was Boris Johnson. But sure: “Syria.” Boris, though, does stand for something, namely just how bizarre much of this developing story is. Here is a regime that, together with its Western supporters and users, has just been runni