Bloomberg reported a few days back that Zelensky told a group of journalists that Russia is allegedly plotting a so-called “Maidan 3”, which the Ukrainian leader candidly acknowledged “is understandable” from the perspective of their strategic interests. This warning comes amidst his spiraling rivalry with Commander-In-Chief Zaluzhny, Time Magazine’s claim that some front-line commanders are refusing his orders to advance, and a former NATO Supreme Commander calling for a Korean-like armistice.
The writing is on the wall that NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine is on its last legs after summer’s failed counteroffensive soured Western policymakers on the scenario of continuing to indefinitely fund this conflict, which was already an issue even prior to the latest Israeli-Hamas war. With Russia having won the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with NATO, the bloc can no longer feasibly maintain the pace, scale, and scope of armed aid to Ukraine, ergo the need for freezing the conflict.
Instead of complying with the West’s reported pressure upon him to recommence peace talks with Russia, he flat-out refuses to do so and continues clinging to what Time Magazine described as his messianic delusion of ultimate victory in the words of one of his unnamed senior officials. This places him on the West’s bad side, thus meaning that his patrons might leverage their agents of influence in Ukrainian society and the state to orchestrate a Color Revolution for justifying another coup there.
Candidly speaking, however, no foreign force – whether Russia or the West – actually has to do anything since the socio-economic and political situation is such that large-scale protests against him could automatically start on their own sometime in the coming future. Zelensky’s messianic delusion is leading to more forcible conscription measures to keep up the conflict, which is in turn worsening resentment against him among both average members of society and especially the armed forces’ rank-and-file.
American and European financial aid isn’t what it used to be, and this could soon lead to the government scaling back some of its services and social support programs, not to mention possibly being unable to pay some of its own employees. These aforementioned problems are rapidly approaching crisis proportions and can only sustainably be resolved by freezing the conflict and focusing entirely on maintaining stability through multifaceted means, which is precisely what Zelensky refuses to do.
Seeing as how some sort of large-scale protests might soon be inevitable, irrespective of whether they’re orchestrated to an extent by the West (it’s unrealistic to imagine that Moscow still wields the influence there required to do so), Zelensky is desperately trying to preemptively discredit them. That’s why he’s concocted his conspiracy theory that the Kremlin would be behind this, which inadvertently discredits his secret police who already claimed to have rooted out all “Russian agents” over the past 21 months.
Instead of prioritizing his country’s objective national interests, which rest in freezing the conflict as explained and was also just explicitly recommended by a former NATO Supreme Commander, Zelensky continues indulging in his messianic delusions of ultimate victory at the expense of Ukrainian interests. There’s no way that this will end well for his people regardless of however everything unfolds. It’s premature to predict that he’ll be toppled, but any large-scale protests will weaken his grip on power.
