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Zelensky was and remains a nepotistic, peace-loving, PR-obsessed, meddling clown (which is, of course, still an immensely better background for a national leader than «KGB officer»; Russian people's love for tryhard strongmen characters, culminating in this obscene Sorokin-esque siloviki regime, is a disaster). If Zelensky is to be called a hero, that must prompt us to reassess the very notion of heroism. But eh, not the first time in this war. Very few people have not had to rethink some basic notion, probably.
I reject the premise that him or his top aides fleeing was a priori likely or could determine the outcome of the war. In my opinion, this is all grounded in hubristic and ignorant imperialist attitude, whether native or imported by osmosis from Russia, an attitude that cannot tell Ukrainians from Afghans.
Ukrainians are stubborn. Obstinate. Pig-headed even. They're the type to say «Fuck me!? No no buddy, fuck you» to any perceived slight (e.g. offhand mention of pigs) and think about details later. Maybe that is sufficient to make heroes? In any case, this trait is not dependent on political leaders and, in fact, is the age-old bane of their political leaders. Were he to pull a Ghani, he'd have earned contempt of his electorate (and maybe eventual assassination); army, nationalists and very soon other sections of society would have rallied around, I dunno, Zaluzhnyi to say their fuck you to Putin and the rest of Ruskie Swine. They don't depend on Strong Leaders. They create them out of the crowd. The latest iteration of their culture had begun with telling a spinelss president to go pound sand. In a conflict with a competent power capable of penetrating Kiev in under, say, five hours that'd not have been good enough. But they had to fight Russia, and Russia gave them more than enough time.
This is ethnic psychology. There were more mundane reasons as to why Zelensky was unlikely to flee. Chief among them is that the AFU is (de facto) not that subordinate to the political authority and has had a lifetime of nationalist upbringing and 8 years of war to gain skills and dig in; hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have gone through the war zone, probably as many were exposed to some extent to territorial defense training. Also important was Europe and USA supplying them with defensive weaponry guaranteed to blunt the first wave of armor and aviation, and of course with intel. The attack was not shocking to them. This fact was shocking to Russia. That's about all. Zelensky or not, they'd have responded because that's what their job was and soldiers rarely just ditch their job.
I don't remember, was it you or someone else early into the war, there was a post with phrasing like «I'm sure Russians too have analytic centers with very smart people dedicated to planning this stuff, and we're seeing the result of one hyperintelligent network beating another, but it's a high-level play, full of feints and moves we cannot comprehend with our limited info». And well, no. Russians don't have anything like that. I'll fully believe if after the war they publish evidence showing that Putin didn't even consult with his «folders» but just watched Evening With Vladimir Solovyov to stay informed. Accordingly, his gamble was not grounded in realistic assessments of his or Ukrainians' forces.
They only needed to be slightly less delusionable to get the upper hand.
I respect wanting to tone down the circlejerking on the Z-Meister. This isn't a movie, and mythologizing individuals is almost always a mistake.
On the other hand, mythologizing an entire nation is perhaps even less realistic. Which is more likely? Thousands of heroes spontaneously emerging among the population or one guy who's been on TV having an existing complex that compelled him to treat this war like a film?
In Arab and african states soldiers frequently just ditch their job. Sometimes they'll even just go over to the other side.
Morale definitely depends on more than one person and practice, but to crystalize my argument I believe there is a bit of an X-factor between Zelensky and the Ukranian army. I don't think that makes me a bleeding heart romantic, because even small differences in effectiveness and resistance snowball when combined with great western weaponry/intelligence.
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I don't think you're giving enough credit to the speeches and PR Zelensky did when the war started. His UN, EU and zoom tours brought on sanctions and the whole SWIFT response, the german cutoff of russian energy reliance and the whole world's UNIFIED response much, much more quickly than it would have otherwise come (if at all), especially if he fled. And it was exactly that unified western response that is swinging the tide of the war, not the Ukrainian pigheadedness.
His speeches were theatric epiphenomena of a process already set into action. There was a precommitment to most/all of that, e.g. SWIFT ban has been on the table for months. (That's just in official speeches. In fact I still have a patriotic newspaper from 2018 calling Putin's attention to this risk.) I am also not sure if it was strategically effective or just a retaliation tool to unbank me and other plebs.
NATO would have lost all credibility with Poles, Balts and more if they abandoned Ukraine to an imperialist aggression after dangling those sanctions and supplying materiel just because the President got cold feet; it would reinforce the post-Afghanistan narrative of the declining power and bolster China wrt Taiwan, destabilize their entire sphere of influence. It's absurd to posit that Zelensky's eloquence and bravery is what made American Empire's geopolitically necessary acts of self-preservation possible. It's comic book logic.
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Weren't me. If anything, as I said at the beginning, I tend towards the view that the detailed intelligence stuff is made-up bullshit. Either we imagine it into existence altogether, or intelligence operatives imagine it is important to justify their budgets. Most of the forces at play here can be figured out from things like GDP figures in this day and age. I remember the posts you were talking about. My comment from the first week of the war is that the reliable leading indicator of Ukrainian collapse and defeat would be when leadership (governmental and military) starts disappearing from Ukraine and showing up in the EU, we have not seen that in any significant numbers today to my knowledge.
Sure, cool, great, Ukrainians are all fiery independent descendants of Cossacks ready to fight at the drop of a hat, and ready to fight before the hat is halfway to the ground if it's Russians. That didn't kick in until the Russians were Nine miles from the city center of Kyiv and had already enveloped Mariupol and taken Kherson. And it didn't kick in in 2014 until the Russians/proxies had already taken Crimea and the majority of Donetsk and Luhansk. So I suspect the best Ethnic Psychology is going to get us is a post-facto just-so story, it has relatively little predictive value.
Sure, but they would have done it without half their country, and without the kind of conventional and political Western support in training and equipment that has proven decisive in allowing Ukrainian forces to face Russian forces in conventional battles and retake territory. Which, at the very least, is a significant downgrade for the majority of Ukrainians. Conventional war is hell, but I'd rather fight a conventional war than an insurgency. Delivering that improvement on the margins is what holding Kyiv delivered, and Kyiv was only a few decisions from falling.
Which brings me to this. How do you define a hero? Taking a significant risk to one's own life (remaining in the capital, ten miles from an army that wants you dead rather than fleeing to Poland) to deliver an improved situation to your nation/ethnos/whatever (bloody conventional war over Slavic Syria) seems to fit the bill for me.
Blitzkriegs can happen irrespective of psychology; Russia has «conquered» (covered) a lot of land then and did not secure any of it, the AFU were reasonable to allow it to break against Kiev which the army of invasion had no means to secure.
In 2014, UA army was genuinely incapable of fighting and reasonably retreated.
More important facts are that Kherson and Melitopol fell basically like Putin expected them to, and Kharkov did not. There were some grounds for expecting Ukrainian surrender, but I maintain that it didn't rely on a few individually heroic people, or even on hundreds of people. In Kherson, there was a substantial consensus against making a stand. In Kiev, it was the other way around by a tremendous margin. You have to recognize that Zelensky was known to be a peacenik, and suspected to be Russian agent by nationalists. His individual cowardice wouldn't have come as a great shock; everyone fighting now had more trustworthy and committed superiors. And seeing the army remain unbroken, the populace would have reacted much the same. It was possible this'd have upset the Ukrainian response a little bit. But Russians couldn't really find and kill Zelensky, and the first guy to recognize that they'd be unable to kill him too would have sufficed as an acting President.
I also do not believe that Western diplomatic and military support would have faltered upon his flight. Ghani had been abandoned before he fled, it was an inevitability since the decision to withdraw American forces was made under Trump. Here, on the other hand, Ukraine as a nation was receiving increasing commitments before the first Z vehicles crossed the border.
A hero is someone who contributes his life to greatly advance a noble cause. But there are disqualifying criteria: irresponsibility, fame chasing, fraud. Zelensky did fuck all to prepare for war, and perhaps even degraded Ukrainian defense capability, betting on Putin's peacefulness. Starting as a clown LARPing as a president, he's secured the office for real, and now he's enjoying the role of a hero, enabled by others, merely a banner.
At most his contribution excuses what he was before the war. A Churchill can only be a hero inasmuch as he's not a Chamberlain. Roll them into one, and you get a fool's redemption arc, not a hero's journey.
I guess Zelensky counts as a Pixar/Disney/Dreamworks hero, though.
Isn't someone sharply and dramatically learning about their deficiencies and delusions a critical part of the hero's journey? That's not to say that a story cycle actually defines a hero. Maybe Zelensky isn't a hero. Maybe we should use a more functional definition of a hero, and he is a hero because that is the role he is acting in for his people. Maybe not. No matter what, I don't think someone's earlier mistakes counts as a disqualification from being a hero.
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I am not aware of Zelensky doing Chamberlain-level mistakes.
Well, then maybe you didn't follow Ukrainian news before these events.
https://www.5.ua/polityka/popry-vsi-dani-rozvidky-zelenskyi-pobachyv-u-ochakh-putina-bazhannia-zakinchyty-viinu-208051.html
He was an appeaser, and he merely failed to erode all army reforms that Poroshenko had initiated. His idea was that escalation of the war is unlikely so Ukraine should focus on civilian infrastructure. Notably, this wasn't a belief shared by most of Ukrainian leadership.
His main strength is PR skill and lack of scruples in the electoral competition. Were he a dictator, he'd more likely than not have compromised with Putin against his people's wishes. But it was politically impossible.
This whole hero discussion is ridiculous. People just love to idolize politicians and root for the team, I guess.
Exactly, and my image of him is definitely overly positive so I am interested in reading more
"Hero" label is still useful, and not using it ever is not the best idea.
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I have a pretty good memory for that stuff, this is the comment you're thinking of. My reply downthread:
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