Sports are often compared to war. NFL Films are full of flowery prose about the soldiers of the gridiron battling to the finish. And it is often said that there are no symbolic victories, no half-measures, no capitulation in sports. A win –and nothing else– is a win.
But life isn’t a sport. There is no timer in real life, except for death, and that can hit zero at any moment. Every day it does for scores of people, some in incredibly gruesome and violent ways, more so in recent years. The elite play with our lives like a sport, but it is not a game. Reality is a shared continual experience that lasts as long as we do, all you can do is work to improve it while you are on the field.
Enter Volodymyr Zelensky, the man ostensibly able to make decisions in Ukraine but one seemingly without the ability to do anything. I imagine Zelensky was proud of himself when he morphed from a comedian with an unusual method of playing the piano, to the NATO-backed and installed “leader” of Ukraine. I imagine that the first night he slept in Marie Palace, he stayed up late thinking about all the things he would do with his newfound power.
I also presume he woke up sometime between then and now and found out that power was nothing but a dream. Maybe it was in 2019 when an Azov battalion fighter embarrassed Zelensky while he was allegedly attempting to get them to abide by the Minsk agreements. Or maybe he woke up when Ukraine had a peace treaty signed with Russia, only to have then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson come and tell him to scrub the whole thing and condemn his country to a bloody and fruitless fight with a much larger and more powerful country.
Or maybe it was this morning, when he found out the Ramstein conference, where he planned to ask Biden for more assistance and permission to strike deep inside Russia, had been delayed to an unspecified date. Zelensky’s so-called “victory plan” will go unheard.
“There is no victory plan for Zelensky. Everybody understands that. His days are numbered,” explained whistleblower and former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko on Sputnik’s The Final Countdown. “We’re going to see how many days there are. [Is he] going to stay afloat until New Year’s? Or [is he] going to stay afloat until November 5th – the [US] elections? Or until January [when the new term begins]? This is Zelensky’s timetable now.”
Zelensky is beset by enemies on all sides. Not just on the battlefield but internationally and domestically. The West is no friend to Zelensky. They assured him he could win with their help. They assured him that they’d stick by him “for as long as it takes.” Anyone with a knowledge of US history could have told him that the US has a history of chewing up and spitting out its supposed allies, but Zelensky was a mere actor, what qualification did he have to doubt the leaders of the West?
Since they never blame themselves, the US will blame Zelensky for losing to Russia in a fight they never expected him to win and will look to replace him as Ukraine transitions to a rump state, but they’d prefer that he holds on until after the election in November.
“They need to sustain themselves. The deep state, the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, [the] Obamas, they need to show that they are still fueling this war, that they’re fighting Russia to stay afloat until the elections. That is the main goal for them, and until then they will decide what’s going to happen next,” explained Telizhenko. “Kamala or Trump, they’re going… to blame Europe and Zelensky and the Nazis in Ukraine. [Say] that they didn’t do their job, even though they were given all the money that the world could give them, they didn’t win.”
Meanwhile, the head of Zelensky’s office, Andrii Yermark keeps the former comedian isolated in a “bubble” who is controlling the narrative for the deep state.
There is also Azov, who never respected Zelensky to begin with and would be furious if he asked for peace. His political rivals are also salivating at Zelensky’s perilous hold on power. “The [Petro] Poroshenko people, the neo-Nazi radical groups, which Zelensky thinks he controls but they’re controlled by the Ukrainian intel and law enforcement, together with the United States [Ukrainian People’s Deputy of Ukraine] Yulia Tymoshenko, [Kiev Mayor Vitali] Klitschko, that crowd, they are going to eat him alive like spiders,” Telizhenko said.
Lastly, the people of Ukraine themselves are increasingly turning on Zelensky. Those that wanted, or could be forced to fight in Ukraine have already been sent to the frontline. “The mayor of Dnepropetrovsk today spoke out that there’s a problem, there’s hardly any men in the city, so they have no one to defend the city,” Telizhenko explained.
Over the summer, the anti-war underground in Ukraine started to grow, with multiple videos showing the vehicles used by mobilization officers being burned with gasoline.
Without the support of his people, his military, his government, or his nominal allies in the West, Zelensky has one option left: turning to Russian President Vladimir Putin and requesting capitulation.
It’s not the end he wanted, but nearly a million Ukrainian men have been killed trying to secure his vision of victory. This is not a game. Zelensky should not worry himself with what he could have had, even though what he was offered by the Russians in Istanbul is far better than he can hope for now. Instead, he needs to look forward and make the only move he can to end the bloodshed.
“A win for Ukraine is saving more lives,” argued Telizhenko. “As [many] lives as they can save, as [many] men they can save, women and children to rebuild Ukraine in the future, that’s going to be a win for Ukraine.”
The only way to do that is to stop sending aid requests to the West, and start sending apology letters east.