Talk in Western media about the possibility of a peace deal with Russia and increasing political and media criticism of Volodymyr Zelensky at home signals that he’s lost his value as a puppet for Western elites and that they’re preparing to dump him, French politician Florian Philippot believes.
“Now that Zelensky is no longer useful and annoys NATO with his stubbornness as the theater of conflict has moved on to the Middle East, the Deep State wants to get rid of him,” Philippot wrote in a social media post.
As evidence, the Gaullist politician pointed to a recent report in Germany’s Bild newspaper on the existence of a “secret peace plan” scenario and plans by Washington and Berlin to pressure Zelensky into negotiations with Russia, as well as “growing political and media criticism against Zelensky” in Ukraine itself, causing the leader, in fear of his safety, to begin firing people left and right.
“France must not allow itself to be duped by being the last country ‘at war’ against Russia,” Philippot urged, referring to Paris' not insubstantial support for Kiev in NATO’s ongoing proxy war with Moscow.
Philippot is the former vice president of Marine Le Pen’s National Front (now called the National Rally), a conservative populist, Eurosceptic party, and served as strategic director Le Pen’s presidential campaign in 2011. He split off and created his own party, The Patriots, in 2017.
The politician’s remarks come amid growing wariness among Kiev’s Western backers over the thought of endlessly continuing the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine after Washington’s goals of “weakening Russia” militarily and economically or instituting regime change in the Kremlin failed to pan out. The situation made worse after Kiev’s disastrous counteroffensive this past summer, which cost Ukraine tens of thousands of its best troops and hundreds of pieces of Western-provided military equipment, including artillery and main battle tanks.
Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny made a bombshell admission earlier this month that Ukraine’s much-touted counteroffensive had hid a “stalemate,” and that there would be “no deep and beautiful breakthrough.” The admission provoked a series of internal cloak and dagger battles within Ukraine’s security establishment.
The outbreak of the Hamas-Israel conflict and the election of a new speaker to the US House of Representatives last month complicated the situation further for Kiev, with Washington focusing resources on its Middle Eastern ally, and holding up President Biden’s request for additional tens of billions of dollars in assistance to Kiev as the US itself finds itself in a budgetary deadlock.
The Ukrainian crisis officially began degenerating into a blame game last week after Davyd Arakhamia, the head of Zelensky’s political party, confirmed long-standing reports that the conflict could have been stopped as early as the spring of 2022 if Ukraine had agreed to neutrality, but that the West killed peace negotiations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed at a meeting with a delegation of officials from Africa back in June that a draft on the permanent neutrality and security guarantees for Kiev had been drafted and even signed by Ukraine’s top negotiator, but that the West threw the agreement into the “dustbin of history.”