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Sunday, June 12, 2022
Emergence of the Growing Rifts among Ukraine's Alliance of Supporters
Kung Chan

More and more signs have emerged indicating that the alliance of Ukrainian supporters, that is, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and other countries, are showing widening rifts. They are not unified in their views, each has its own problems, and all want the war to end the soonest time possible. None of them, as things stand, are sincere in their support given to Ukraine.

Then, coming from Ukraine’s staunchest ally the United States, President Joe Biden has recently made an unexpected accusation that his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy "didn’t want to hear" warnings from the U.S. embassy about a Russian invasion. Biden's speech, understood by the world as “the responsibility for the Russian invasion lies on Zelenskyy because he didn't heed the warnings”.

On the Ukrainian side, Mykhailo Podolyak, Adviser to the Head of the Office of the President, was understandably rather upset with Biden's remarks. He stated Kyiv did know that Russia was ready to invade, and that Ukraine was preparing for it. Podolyak added that despite the intelligence preparations of some countries, they still delayed the supply of heavy weapons. What Ukraine meant was Western countries did nothing. This is of course, quite true as well.

With such exchanges on both sides, Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, immediately came out to mediate, assuring that U.S. President Joe Biden has “a lot of respect" for the Ukrainian President and his leadership during the all-out war. “This does not deserve to be news. Russia is trying to destroy the Ukrainian nation and its culture, the United States will not stand by and will not allow this to happen,” Brink said. She stressed that Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians “inspired the world with their courage and resilience, showing the world that Ukraine will never be conquered by Russia”.

As expected of the United States, money was used to get things done. Therefore, Ambassador Brink immediately reminded everyone that the U.S. has provided USD 5.3 billion in security assistance, including USD 4.6 billion after Russia launched a full-scale invasion. The ambassador pledged that the U.S. and its allies will continue to support Ukraine.

It is quite apparent that the Western alliance is not only loose, but more and more fissures are forming, and they all want things to end fast. If a protracted war is fought, the survival of the West, not Vladimir Putin, will be at stake. After all, Putin is a leader who has the final say in the country he leads, and he can simply disregard the ordinary Russians. Yet, the West is a different story. During the Vietnam War in the past, the U.S. military did not actually lose any of the battles. However, the U.S. could not be dragged into the war indefinitely, so the Vietnamese finally won. This is the so-called "strategic victory", and the situation in Ukraine right now is rather similar. The U.S. is also facing a lot of domestic troubles, where even the shortage of baby milk powder has unexpectedly become a political issue. Therefore, the distraught Biden actually hopes that the war will end soon. When it comes to the territorial loss of Ukraine, it is simply not the concern of these "defenders of democracy and justice”.

What then, can Zelenskyy do? Nothing much, unless he once again launches a worldwide mass movement, like what Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi did in the past to set off a worldwide cultural wave that created pressures from the bottom up. If Zelenskyy were to depend on those Western politicians, he can only make compromises and accept the harsh reality.

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