Yes, Zelensky Is a Dictator
There is no need to sugar-coat the Ukrainian regime.
President Donald Trump enraged Ukraine’s usual band of cheerleaders in the United States and Europe when he called Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator. Their reaction was similar to the sputtering outrage that townspeople directed at the boy who dared insist that the emperor had no clothes. It did not matter that anyone with eyes could see that the monarch was buck naked; noting that obvious truth was politically unacceptable.
Zelensky’s defenders focused most of their attention on just one of Trump’s accusations: that the term of Ukraine’s president had expired in May 2024, and that elections had been postponed for however long the war with Russia might continue. Although it should seem odd to defend the concept of a “democracy” in which free elections are not an integral feature, such an inconvenient detail does not seem to bother Ukraine’s avid supporters. They note for example, that Britain had postponed elections during the Second World War, enabling Prime Minister Winston Churchill to remain in office.
Focusing on the election issue enables Zelensky’s fans to ignore his government’s other numerous, anti-democratic outrages. But remaining in office after the expiration of his term is among the least of Zelensky’s offenses. Under his rule, the Ukrainian government has outlawed nearly a dozen opposition parties, stifled the press, launched a campaign against uncooperative churches, and has conducted a program of arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and assassination.
Much of that authoritarian behavior was evident even before the February 2022 Russian invasion. In Freedom House’s 2022 report, Ukraine was listed in the “partly free” category, scoring 61 points out of a possible 100. Human Rights Watch’s 2021 report on Ukraine also was far from favorable, citing various abuses by government forces, “including arbitrary detentions, torture or ill-treatment.” Journalists and media workers “faced harassment and threats connected to their reporting.”
Freedom House’s 2024 report confirmed that the record of Ukraine’s government has become even worse. The country remained in the “partly free” category, but its overall score declined to 49 from 61 in 2022. Ratings for political rights and civil liberties declined even more, with dismal scores of 21 and 28, respectively. Moreover, the tepid evaluation came from an organization that is habitually friendly to Western values and U.S.-led foreign policy goals. If the “partly free” rating is the best Ukraine could muster from an exceedingly friendly source, one can imagine what a more neutral party would conclude.
One especially odious action that the Zelensky regime has taken is a transparent attempt to intimidate critics, both in Ukraine and in foreign countries. The Ukrainian government’s Center for Countering Disinformation (in part funded by the U.S.) published a “blacklist” of these critics, including University of Chicago’s Professor John J. Mearsheimer, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (now the director of national intelligence), and Doug Bandow, a contributing editor to The American Conservative.
In late September 2023, the CCD issued a revised roster, including addresses, of the top 35 targets, whom it denounced as “disinformation terrorists” and “war criminals.” This was pure menace. It would be extremely naïve to assume that U.S. critics are off-limits as targets.
An article in the Economist confirmed the possible extent of the danger. It described Kiev’s systematic assassination program in considerable detail. Targets “have been shot, blown up, hanged and even, on occasion, poisoned with doctored brandy.” Such behavior did not begin as a response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Assassinations date back to at least 2015, when Ukraine’s domestic security service (SBU) “created a new body after Russia had seized Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. The elite fifth counter-intelligence directorate started life as a saboteur force in response to the invasion. It later came to focus on what is euphemistically called ‘wet work’.”
If the account by the Economist is accurate, such behavior apparently began during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko (another U.S. client that Washington portrayed as a democratic stalwart), but it has become more frequent and brazen under Zelensky. Moreover, it needs to be emphasized that the targets of assassinations receive no due process whatsoever. Government authorities arbitrarily decide that they are traitors and proceed to execute them without a trial. That is an outrageous way for a supposed democracy to behave, but it seems to be the norm in Zelensky’s “democratic” Ukraine.
In addition to accusing Zelensky of being a dictator, Trump made another comment that triggered fury on the part of Ukraine’s American and European partisans. Trump contended that Zelensky foolishly “started” the war with Russia, a conflict that has led to such horrific destruction in his country. Ukraine’s Western sponsors immediately countered with the argument that Kiev bears no responsibility for the onset of war with Russia and that Vladimir Putin is a monstrous ruler who will embark on a massive expansionist binge if the United States and NATO abandon Zelensky.
Trump’s allegation that Zelensky “started” the war was an unfortunate and inaccurate choice of words. Moscow initiated the armed combat, both in 2014 when Russian forces seized Crimea and again with the multi-front military offensive in February 2022. In that narrow sense, Russia, not Ukraine, started the war.
Nevertheless, Trump’s critics are being more than a little dishonest when they contend or imply that Moscow’s actions were entirely unprovoked. The United States pushed NATO’s eastward expansion to Russia’s border. For the most powerful military alliance in history to engage in such behavior was inherently provocative. Trying to make Ukraine a NATO member, or at least a U.S.-NATO military asset, in defiance of repeated warnings from the Kremlin that such a step would cross an intolerable “red line” as far as Russia’s security was concerned amounted to a reckless provocation.
Yet Zelensky was willing to let the Western powers use his country as a weapon to antagonize and try to intimidate Moscow. Indeed, after February 2022, Ukraine became an outright military proxy in NATO’s war to weaken, defeat, and humiliate Russia. He, therefore, bears a great deal of the blame for his country’s tragedy. Zelensky’s clueless conduct does not excuse the Kremlin’s decision to resort to military force against its neighbor, but it does confirm that Moscow’s aggression was hardly “unprovoked.”
Members of the West’s pro-Ukraine lobby must stop portraying Zelensky as a heroic figure and a democratic martyr. He is nothing of the sort. At best, he is a gullible fool that pro-war NATO officials have used for their own cynical agenda to knock Russia out of the ranks of the world’s major powers. At worst, he has been a willing accomplice in that campaign at horrific cost to his own country.
The post Yes, Zelensky Is a Dictator appeared first on The American Conservative.
