He was once well liked in his native land. Loved even. Why wouldn’t he be? He had made people laugh and had starred in a TV series that inspired so much hope in the population that he was elected president in a landslide.
What did that hope consist of?
Volodomyr Zelensky said he was going to end the conflict that had been raging in his country since 2014. The TV series where he played the part of a politician seeking to end political corruption was a smash hit. It’s name was ‘Servant of the People’ and this was the name he subsequently chose for the political party he would form.
The hope he generated in the Ukrainian population then was that the bloody conflict in southeastern Ukraine would end and, into the bargain Zelensky would lead a government of non-politicians who would end corruption in their nation. These hopes were generated out of sheer desperation and exasperation. They had, had enough disappointment, fear, turmoil and rampant chaos and disorder to last several lifetimes. They wanted out. They wanted a fresh start. This is why they chose Zelenskyy and his people.
So, what’s the problem? It all worked out didn’t it? Good old Zelenskyy achieved both goals he had set for himself. Didn’t he? Sadly not.
Those first few months of the Zelenskyy presidency were indeed hopeful. He had sworn to bring peace with Russia and he had set in place mechanisms which aimed to end the rampant corruption Ukraine was known for across Europe. Then he hit a massive roadblock.
Those who had brought his predecessor to power through a violent insurrection which overturned both the democratically-elected president and his government, had no intention of letting Zelenskyy do as he promised. And they had all the means necessary to stop him. They, and the neo-Nazi militias they belonged to were heavily armed and utterly dedicated to their ultra-violent methods of influence.
The turning point for Zelenskyy appears to have been certain personal confrontations which occurred when he travelled to the front lines to insist Ukrainian militants withdraw to a point he had agreed with the OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They refused to move and refused to accept his authority to order them to move.
This was the start of the process that would lead Volodymyr Zelenskyy to become the unluckiest man in the world. He had met a determined, ruthless and utterly determined object. There can be no doubt at all that it was here in this confrontation that he was told that if he pursued the promise of peace that he had made that he was a dead man.
Soon after the encounter above Zelenskyy would transform himself from a man seeking peace to a man waging war. His statements after this time would never reflect someone interested in a peaceful resolution of differences with Russia. He began speaking of Ukraine regaining its nuclear status and, while he attended the meetings discussing the purported route to peace, the Minsk Accords, he did so with a smirk knowing they were only a stalling mechanism while Ukraine built its forces to better wage war.
As was to be expected after seeking every possible way forward to a peaceful outcome but having each one rejected by the West, Russia finally and reluctantly mounted a military campaign to achieve a final end to the war that had begun in 2014.
It was only a month into Russia’s campaign when peace talks were convened. These eventually bore fruit with something approaching an agreement between both sides. However, in his second unlucky decision Zelenskyy allowed himself to be persuaded to end these talks and continue the war instead.
Now Zelenskyy was doubly cursed. He had moved from peacemaker to warmonger and now delivered a dictum that there would be no more talks. The die was cast. There could be no return for him to the role of peacemaker or to pursuing the promise of an end to the war that he had achieved electoral victory for him.
This double lock on any turning back was enforced most of all by the threat to his life if he even made the slightest move toward reconciling differences with the Russians. Not once, ever, could he voice any desire in that direction or he, and most likely his family, would be immediately put to death. Zelensky knew the people who threatened this could easily do so, no matter where he hid, even if it was in the furthest corner of the world.
Once lauded as a great hero, one compared to the likes of Sir Winston Churchill, currently he is treated pretty much as a bad smell, an uninvited and extremely unwelcome guest. How the so-called mighty are fallen, huh? It's impossible to see him returning to his former career. He is only a bad joke now. In his brown garb he just might find a job as a toilet attendant, but even that lowly mode of employment is uncertain.
So, he is now, at the end stage of the deadly game he's been playing, a tragic figure, locked into a single path from which he cannot and must not deviate. Mouthing only and ever the same maximalist, anti-Russian rhetoric about a never attainable victory while he urges ever more Ukrainians to die in their thousands in what is clearly now and in fact always was, a lost cause.
However, if he takes the part he is acting to the absolute limit and only walks off that stage at the final moment as Russia wins and the curtain falls, perhaps the neo-Nazis he has obeyed all this time will relent and let him live. But… will the nearest and dearest of the half million who died due to the part he played? Or might they much more likely take swift revenge, stringing him up alongside his wife on the nearest lamp post as they did Mussolini and his dear sweetheart? The chances they will are pretty high.
These are the reasons why Zelenskyy is the unluckiest man on the planet, having moved from being a much-loved comic and bit-part actor seeking to bring peace and joy to the world… to an automaton, a hapless and robotic figure trapped into causing endless horror, and very likely the demise of his entire nation.
VOLODOMYR ZELENSKYY: THE UNLUCKIEST MAN ON THE PLANET
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