While Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan is currently stealing all the foreign policy headlines, there is still a war going on in Eastern Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to drag on, with both sides settling for small gains in different sectors. That’s obviously making some in Washington, who were certain they’d come out big political winners in all this, nervous as to where things could go.
This is why the White House is dumping Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian President, under the bus. The New York Times’ Chinese-loving reporter Thomas Friedman made the announcement.
According to the article, which is mostly about Pelosi and Taiwan, there is “deep mistrust” between the White House and Zelensky, causing US officials to fret about the state of things. Further, there’s even a formerly taboo mention of “corruption” in Ukraine being a factor in the nation’s stumbles during the war.
Wow. According to the NYT stenographer, Zelensky was just run over by the White House.
h/t @Midian_1616 pic.twitter.com/a8gmNYE7JK
— Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.substack.com (@JordanSchachtel) August 2, 2022
My read on this is fairly simple: As so often happens in Washington, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the smart set’s expectations have failed to match the realities on the ground. The White House decided to arm Ukraine and sanction Russia early in the war, assuming that Vladamir Vladimir Putin would lose too much, become bored and then go home. Within weeks, proclamations were issued to indicate that Russia was at the edge of collapsing in Ukraine. This was after Kyiv had been secured.
But that hasn’t happened. Perhaps because Putin doesn’t feel he can lose by backing down, Russia instead has strengthened its east position and settled in for an extended war of attrition. The ruble is not falling as forecast, and Russia has yet to feel the economic consequences.
In regards to Zelensky’s leadership, the fact that the war has moved to more of a stalemate is hardly a failure. Ukraine is a smaller, weaker nation than Russia, and the fight that’s been put up in its defense has been valorous. It was a huge victory to stop Putin taking Kyiv or other areas further west. But while Western nations continue to pump in mostly lower-tier weaponry, you need soldiers to use those weapons, and Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower to extricate Russia from its borders.
That’s not good enough for a White House that was counting on the full-scale embarrassment of Putin being a key political issue heading into 2024. Russia has refused to cooperate, and someone needs to take the blame. That’s where these leaks claiming Biden is losing faith in Zelensky are coming from. You’ll never hear the president himself say it publicly, but the White House is prepping its excuses for when things are still at a stand-still a year from now.
You see, it wasn’t that Biden miscalculated and set expectations far too high for what could be accomplished. It was Zelensky not being competent enough. It’s all very convenient, right?
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