Oamenii simpli refuză ideea de război din cauza instinctului de conservare. Oamenii politici practică războiul din cauza orgoliului și a profitului personal. Asta este o constantă istorică. Avraam a stat neutru la coalițiile războinice din Canaan.

Harm Poelen

It was an interesting interview and good to see / hear Zelensky discuss these various topics. I personally live in Ukraine and do have some remarks / critical notes:

1. I personally found that you allowed Zelensky to get away with not answering critical questions and sometimes he turned them around into a question aimed at you. You did not push back at such moments to push Zelensky to answer the question.

2. Zelensky compared Putin to Hitler and connected parallels in terms of what could happen if he is not stopped. The fear of Putin invading Poland or the Baltic States is frequently mentioned by Zelensky (during and outside of this interview). He simply does not allow for introspection to understand the dire situation that the US has forced upon him by constantly expanding the sphere of influence of NATO towards the east. Such a discussion should have been pushed much harder by you in my opinion. Why were (are) there US funded bio-labs in the Ukraine, why were (are) there CIA outposts near the Russian border.

3. The question of discrimination against the Russian language inside Ukraine was also brushed aside by Zelensky as if it is a non-issue. It is NOT. In 2019 a law was passed by the Ukrainian parliament which would require Ukraine to be the only language allowed to be used in public, education, media and government in the whole of Ukraine. This law required even required restaurants to only have a Ukrainian menu and waiters to address customers in Ukraine first. Only if the customer would respond in Russian, would the waiter be allowed to switch to Russian. If such laws would be passed in Belgium (with French and Flemish / Dutch) as the two languages, there would be civil war. I remember that this decision sparked a lot if discussion inside my Ukrainian team.

4. Zelensky referred back to the Bush administration and that the US / Bush understood that Ukraine had a right to be admitted into NATO and that such a noble stance from Bush showed the strength of Bush and the US government. I felt that you could have pushed this topic much harder from the Putin point of view and refer to the Cuban missile crisis or Canada becoming a military partner of China with Chinese tropes and rockets stationed along the northern border with the US. I also really don’t believe that Zelensky is that naive and doesn’t understand that Bush and the neocons were just pushing their globalist agenda to see how far they could push Russia. At some point it was even openly discussed, that with Ukrainian accession into NATO, Sevastopol could no longer be a Russian naval base. I think that was around the time that Maidan happened and Russia invaded Crimea. Action and reaction.
5. I felt that the part where Zelensky was rambling on about Putin being a monster because of the people that have died in Ukraine and that he (and many of his military cronies) should go to jail for these crimes was very delusional and very naive. At that moment I really wanted you to refer to all the countries that the US has invaded over the past decennia and the millions of people dead, disabled or pushed away as refugees because of these wars (you did mention this later on during the interview but outside of this part of the discussion). We never hear about locking up the heads of state in the US for these aggressive and often unprovoked wars (or active regime changes). I’m definitely not saying that I agree with Putin invading Ukraine and I definitely do not forgive him for all the suffering, destruction and death that he has caused. But we need to be realistic about the geopolitical situation and the part that the US and NATO have played in this whole scenario. War is a very dirty business and sadly there is no version of war where the only casualties of war are the people that make the decision to go to war. Even worse; they are often the only people left standing once the dust has settled. From that perspective we have not progressed a lot since the Napoleonic wars.
6. I sort of had to chuckle when Zelensky mentioned that this war is about freedom in Ukraine. About the freedom to join NATO and the EU. I come from the EU and the day that I canceled my registration for the EU (Netherlands) was the day that I had a little dance of joy. The EU and UK are rapidly becoming Marxist authoritarian states. Inside the individual member states people are locked up for posting some hard truths on social media. Taxes are completely out of control. Farmers are being harassed into bankruptcy and even suicide. Member states have less and less to say about what happens inside their borders (look at the push back from Poland and Hungary on the immigration issue and the fines they have to pay). Most legislation is now being decided by unelected officials inside the EU. And these are just a few of the dystopian things happening inside the EU. So if Ukraine joins EU, I’m definitely going to leave Ukraine as the place I call home.
7. As for corruption, I can tell you about a lot of horrific stories which I hear when talking to Ukrainian born citizens and army personnel. People are actively asking for or offering bribes to stay out of the army, to not be send to the first line of contact, to be allowed to go on leave, to be assigned to a relatively safe station when drafted into the army, etc. Zelensky can say all he wants about Ukraine being able to fight against corruption, but Ukraine is still a cesspool of corruption and power abuse. Many people on the frontline have not been able to take a necessary breather for months / years by now and they are tired of this fight.
   As my last comment I would like to list a few unasked questions. Maybe in a follow-up interview you could push a bit harder and ask these questions: i. Why did Ukraine government shutdown / ban all Russia oriented media and political parties (BTW; Russia oriented does not mean that these were Russian propaganda outlets). In a true democracy such organisations should be allowed to continue exist and be part of the discussion.
   ii. Why was the journalist Gonzalo Lira arrested in Ukraine and what happened to him? He was clearly afraid for his life and eventually ended up dead inside a Ukraine prison. He was an official journalist. I personally could never stomach his videos and found them to be bias towards Russia, but he had every right as a journalist to document the war inside Ukraine from inside the Donbas.
   iii. At the beginning of the war huge mistakes were made (if they even were mistakes and not treason) which allowed Russian forces to occupy the Kherson region and relatively easily surround Mariupol. What happened there and why has there not been a public reckoning?

iv. Why not accept the geopolitical fact that Russia will never accept Ukraine becoming part of NATO?
v. Why didn’t you accept the peace deal that was brokered in Turkey only two months after the start of the war and are you not very sorry now that you didn’t do that? (maybe the most important one).

Categories: Articole de interes general