Day 687
As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the start of fascistic Russia’s genocidal campaign against Ukraine, the violent, amoral future drama we presaged in early 2014 continues to play out, replete with sociopathic protagonists and their assorted viciousness.
Team USA reportedly wants Ukraine to sharpen its plan for fighting Russia’s invasion and is expected to raise the issue on the sidelines of the beano in Davos next week. Z is expected to attend, along with macroeconomist Javier Gerardo Milei, the new president of Argentina. Both Z and Milei say they want to align their countries with the United States, Israel and the ‘free world.’ Critics accuse them of incompetence, demagoguery and caprice.
Roman Kostenko, secretary of Ukraine’s Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence and a member of the Holos party, has said Z should less concerned with boosting his sagging popularity than with preserving the state, as he will not be re-elected for a second term.
"I believe that now President Zelensky must understand for himself that he will never be president again, that this is only one term that he has now. He must realize that he is politically dead. And now he has to make decisions not that will give him the opportunity to be re-elected in the next election or that will support his ratings, but those that will allow him to save this state," he said in an interview with NV Radio.
Elections here are not scheduled until the war ends. Like Argentina, Ukraine is a sham democracy. Under Z during martial law, it has remained a primitive post-soviet feudal autocracy. Since independence in 1991, democracy in Ukraine has not been underpinned by elections or coordinated work of institutions, but by popular uprisings (2004, 2013-14). Absent them, even the illusion of democracy would not exist.