If the West’s Promises to Ukraine Are Genuine, Then Why Is Zelensky the Loneliest Leader in the World?

 Martin JAY

Martin Jay is an award-winning British journalist based in Morocco where he is a correspondent for The Daily Mail (UK) who previously reported on the Arab Spring there for CNN, as well as Euronews. From 2012 to 2019 he was based in Beirut where he worked for a number of international media titles including BBC, Al Jazeera, RT, DW, as well as reporting on a freelance basis for the UK’s Daily Mail, The Sunday Times plus TRT World. His career has led him to work in almost 50 countries in Africa, The Middle East and Europe for a host of major media titles. He has lived and worked in Morocco, Belgium, Kenya and Lebanon.

War is cruelty on a level most of us can’t process. But even more cruel are those who orchestrate it and then run away and hide the moment the knife is drawn from the sheath.

The baptism of fire from western analysts and newsrooms is that the “invasion” of Ukraine is unjust and that “Putin will stop at nothing now” in his so-called quest to retake former Soviet bloc countries.

“Where will it end? Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic?” one harped, while millions nod their heads in a gang bang of blinded dogma and bigotry. Few care to look at the history and the nuances of what has happened in recent years which provoked such a reaction from Putin. From as far back as a decade ago when the West overthrew Ghadaffi and created a war there which it then backed with its own jihadists (which threw a major spanner in the works for Putin’s ambitions in Libya) to missiles placed strategically by NATO in Romania and Poland, for example, reported on as recently as 2018, which were wrapped in a sugar coating of narrative from the op-ed writers in the West who talked about Russia no longer being the threat, as the new enemy is Islamic terrorism etc etc.

Western newsrooms are still trying to pull the wool over our eyes about Ukraine, simplifying and distorting the facts, simply so as they can get on with their jobs of producing the fodder to keep them busy, while serving their masters in government who chuck them a bone every now and again with a leaked report.

The so-called “revolution” in Ukraine is always reported as a victory for the West as “democracy” finally slayed the evil powers of Soviet-esque influence as the latter is always painted as corrupt and the former candida.

But there are enough voices out there which call what happened in Ukraine back then as a U.S.-backed coup d’etat and Zelensky as the new useful idiot of the west. Even the Los Angeles Times put the boot in recently when, just days before the invasion, it painted a picture of the new president as a near-useless cretin masquerading as a political hero who had lost a colossus of political capital in recent months when the tensions started to be palatable last year.

Will any western hacks examine this further and look at the different accounts? Unlikely, as this “grey zone” is what nearly all western journalists hate as it represents masses of work and going against the grain of both the narrative from their own governments but also the grey-haired chiefs’ views in the newsroom. We saw this with Syria. Kudos to Peter Hitchens for standing alone and trying to offer a more objective point of view about the Ukraine invasion. I doubt if anyone will follow him.

The story for western media has already been written and neatly divided into two binary portions of tainted narrative which is an egregiously cruel part of war: truth usually is the first casualty when the bullets start flying.

But what about the promises of support from the West towards the Zelensky government? Isn’t that a morose act of sublime cruelty in itself? To promise to help, but in reality only offer token support of relatively small amounts of cash and military hardware? Will NATO send one soldier to the Ukraine to fight Russian soldiers there? Will any EU member state do the same?

Yet the narrative continues and you can see the strain on Zelensky’s face in his social media posts and his anger towards Washington, NATO and the EU.

As those sanctions start to bite, who really are the winners and losers? The embarrassing press conference given by Biden where, after finishing the painful autocue speech, he declares to one reporter that “sanctions won’t prevent anything” is baffling. The truth is that sanctions are really all that the EU and US has to fill in the widening gap, the radio silence from NATO which talks a great talk on supporting allies but looks more and more weak, ineffective and pointless as the days go on. Building up NATO troops in neighbouring countries will soon be seen for the empty gesture it is when the bloodbath starts as Ukrainians show resistance against Russian advances. As the whole world watches, soon NATO’s credibility will plummet even further as the implications of doing nothing but merely acting as a spectator will make the organisation tumble to an all-time low. The argument from many at NATO that Putin’s aim to push NATO back has backfired as it has only resulted in more troops being stationed now in Poland, for example, is a lame one at best. What is likely to emerge in the coming days and weeks is that the West is likely to become a bigger enemy of most Ukrainians when they see what the real deal is and Zelensky’s rallying call to the masses, if he is not toppled, will be a scathing attack on these so-called western values, with the EU itself being in his crosshairs – a win-win for Putin, many will note. War is cruelty on a level most of us can’t process. But even more cruel are those who orchestrate it and then run away and hide the moment the knife is drawn from the sheath. 

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/27/if-west-promises-ukraine-genuine-then-why-zelensky-loneliest-leader-in-world/