Finian Cunningham
Zelensky and his handlers want the whole of Europe to drive over the abyss. But the talented Mr Zelensky is pushing the script beyond acceptable limits when he starts slapping Berlin around.
Team Zelensky has been playing a deft, if cloyingly confected, game up to now. The Ukrainian president has found time in his busy wartime schedule to address over 17 parliaments around the world in recent weeks, each time with a speech tailor-made to push specific cultural emotive buttons.
In addition to artful speechwriting, he is apparently on the phone with world leaders on a daily basis recounting alleged horrors committed by Russian troops and hectoring for more weapons to be sent to Ukraine and for more draconian sanctions to be slapped on Moscow. He also finds time to address Hollywood audiences with tear-jerking speeches. Let's just say this guy is way too busy for it to be a solo production.
Team Zelenksy: one must conclude that there is more to President Vladimir Zelensky than meets the eye. Reports of multibillion-dollar offshore accounts in the Caribbean are another indicator.
The comedian-actor with Jewish heritage is a perfect ventriloquist foil for fronting a regime that is infested with Nazi military forces. All the more important is this foil because Western "democratic" states are neck-high in sponsoring and weaponizing the regime whose foot-soldiers proudly don Waffen-SS insignia.
But the power trip from gaslighting the world seems to have gone to his head and that of his CIA, MI6 handlers. This week, Team Zelensky went too far by snubbing Germany, the linchpin power of the European Union.
It transpired that German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was told by Zelensky's aides that he wasn't welcome in Kiev as part of a delegation that included the leaders of Poland and the Baltic states. Those four leaders went ahead with their "solidarity visit" to Kiev while Steinmeier was left behind in Berlin. The snub has caused major embarrassment in Germany with even the mild-mannered Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying he was "irked" by the insult to the German head of state.
One reason for slight to Steinmeier is its complaint that he is perceived as being too close to Russia. During former Chancellor Merkel's coalition government, Steinmeier was a foreign minister and helped negotiate the 2014, 2015 Minsk peace agreements. Kiev repudiated those accords and that is one factor in why the present war in Ukraine escalated with Russia's intervention on February 24. For Kiev to claim that Steinmeier is "too close to Russia" on that basis is ludicrous and just shows how unreasonable and obsessively anti-Russian the regime is.
But there is more to it, it seems. Zelensky and his U.S. and British handlers have been aiming to lever Germany, as well as France, into adopting a more antagonistic line against Russia. As the Washington Post noted indignantly this week, the two big European economies and NATO members are not pulling their weight in terms of supplying weapons to Ukraine.
Chancellor Scholz has so far resisted pressure to send more heavy weaponry to Ukraine. Berlin has been mocked for supplying "only helmets".
Likewise, Scholz has refused calls for a total embargo on Russian oil and gas imports. No doubt, he realizes that such a move would be suicidal for Germany's economy.
Meanwhile, however, Zelensky and his script-writers have become ever-more shrill and petulant. Showing impatience, Zelensky declared this week for all of Europe to immediately cut off energy trade with Russia in order "to stop sponsoring the Russian military machine".
To emphasize the displeasure with Berlin for not being sufficiently aggressive towards Moscow, it seems that Team Zelensky somehow thought it a good idea to insult the German president.
But in overplaying their hand, Zelensky and his ventriloquists are running the risk of splitting the all-important "unity" of NATO and the European Union under overbearing American leadership.
This apparent unity is more fragile than the outward bluster of U.S. President Joe Biden would like to make out. Washington is desperate to keep NATO and the EU on the same virtual battle station with regard to fighting its proxy war against Russia. If NATO members start to question the whole madcap policy of arming Ukraine or if EU members start to question the self-defeating sanctions then the U.S.-led anti-Russia front begins to collapse.
In their conceit, Team Zelensky is liable to lose the plot. An artificial country on the periphery of Europe that is mired in oligarchic corruption and Nazi paramilitaries and run by a comedian-turned-politician seems to have acquired the supercilious notion that it has the authority to dictate policy to Berlin, Paris and indeed the entire European Union.
Not only that but the Kiev regime is being bolstered by Poland and the Baltic states which aren't exactly thought of as "model liberal Europeans". Before the Ukrainian conflict blew up, Brussels and Warsaw were on a collision course over the latter's alleged anti-European Union policies.
For Zelensky to insult Germany by humiliating President Steinmeier in such a public way, shows that he and his handlers have overestimated their leverage.
Delivering well-crafted speeches that exploit the psychological weaknesses of other national leaders has been a successful ploy by Team Zelensky. But they are overlooking the fact that he is a mere cipher from a peripheral country. Sooner or later, the hysteria and hyperbole evaporate and what is left is the incongruous image of a cipher telling European heads of state what to do. Pushing the anti-Russia propaganda has its limits of credibility and forbearance. Scholz, Macron nor Le Pen are going to oblige their total debasement.
Zelensky and his handlers want the whole of Europe to drive over the abyss. But the talented Mr Zelensky is pushing the script beyond acceptable limits when he starts slapping Berlin around.