The Financial Times (FT) just published a piece about how “Ukrainians question Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s ‘rose-tinted’ speeches” on the eve of his visit to the US. This represents the latest example of the Western media undermining the Ukrainian leader after “WaPo Amplified The Arguments Of Ukrainian Draft Dodgers Right As Zelensky Wants More Conscripts”. The FT’s report goes even further than Wapo’s by citing “officials from the armed forces, former presidential staffers and communication strategists.”
According to their sources, the consistent message of “’we’re moving forward’…is creating a rift between the presidential administration and military leadership”, particularly between Zelensky and Zaluzhny. An unnamed person connected to the president’s communication strategy pleaded that “We need to add more realism”. Meanwhile, military leaders warned that “the gap between official messaging and the situation on the ground is no longer convincing”, which risks demoralizing Ukrainians and the West alike.
Former Defense Minister Reznikov’s head of communications went on record telling the FT that “the optimism strategy” has backfired so badly that nowadays “expectations are overstated and do not correspond to the real state of affairs.” Moreover, “Media articles describing things as ‘not as good’ as the official line were viewed as false”, which calls for “balanced realism” according to her assessment. In her words, “it is necessary to stop being afraid to speak the truth”, which is a powerful statement.
Her quote was shared a little after the FT informed their audience that “Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko recently accus[ed] the president of authoritarianism and even comparing him to Russian leader Vladimir Putin”, thus indirectly lending credence to his description and further undermining Zelensky. Reznikov’s head of communications obviously can’t speak as freely as Klitschko can, but the little that she said spoke volumes since she strongly implied that national interests are now threatened by Zelensky’s lies.
She warned that “the current strategy had left audiences in the west asking why they should contribute their taxpayers’ money if Ukraine was always ‘about to win’”, which would wind down the conflict even faster than it already is if more funding isn’t soon secured, possibly due in part to this perception. The FT then cited an unnamed former communications staff who shared the case of Artyomovsk/“Bakhmut” as an example of what risks materializing if the official narrative doesn’t soon shift.
Hyping everyone up by calling that city “Fortress Bakhmut” and “Unbreakable Bakhmut” only for it to then fall into Russian hands, which Zelensky to this day refuses to officially acknowledge as the FT reminded their readers, discredited Ukraine after everything leading up to that debacle was covered up. The article then drew to a close with some words from the director of Ukraine’s Institute for Mass Information, who confirmed that her compatriots still found out the truth “despite censorship”.
She therefore advised that “If there is no negative information (in official reports), it will kill the trust towards the government”, which FT implied throughout their piece is exactly what’s happened. Given the context, the media’s latest undermining of Zelensky will further impede his new conscription drive, which is already expected to be so difficult to pull off at this latest defensive phase of the conflict that his senior advisor Poldolyak publicly declared an impending propaganda campaign in support of it last week.
The socio-political conditions that are being created as a result of Zelensky’s refusal to recognize reality and de-escalate the conflict with a view towards freezing it lend credence to what Russian foreign spy chief Naryshkin said on Monday regarding the West’s growing interest in replacing him. He explained that the West doesn’t consider him capable of doing the aforesaid due to how far he’s gone in building up his hawkish image, hence the need to possibly swap him out for someone else in order to initiate this.
For as skeptical as some might be about what he just said due to his side’s self-explanatory interests in discrediting Zelensky and widening Ukraine’s differences with the West, there’s no denying that the FT’s piece, WaPo’s beforehand, and Politico’s prior to both already advanced the preceding two goals. This doesn’t prove Kasparov’s conspiracy theory that the US is against Ukraine’s full victory, but is evidence that it’s preparing for a regime change if it feels forced to freeze the conflict to avert Ukraine’s full defeat.
