Quote (ofthevoid @ 30 May 2023 17:47)
Most of these presidents or prime ministers are just public figures with a face and in reality don't actually hold significant power. Zelensky is not a 'real' decision maker in all of this, he's just the face. It's the advisors both in the US to Biden or in Ukraine to Zelensky that actually call the shots and those are not always so easy to fully know who they are.
Deep down I think Zelensky when he ran on a platform of reconciling Ukraine's relationship with Russia was at least somewhat genuine. Problem is, it's next to impossible to be an ideologue, you get molded to what the machine wants or you get spit out. Now he basically has two central roles. Act as the 'defiant' leader and go around the globe to try and collect as much money and support as possible.
It's actually quite interesting to ask "who's the power behind Zelensky's throne?"
For example, there is this oligarch who I (and many others) thought to be the puppet maser behind him last year, but upon further reading, that seems to no longer be the case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_KolomoyskyiQuote
in 2010 Kolomoyskyi was rated as the second richest person in Ukraine, and as one of the country’s most influential oligarchs. In 1992, he had co-founded PrivatBank and its informal extension of companies, Privat Group, and he subsequently acquired extensive media holdings. Between 2014 and 2016, Kolomoyskyi served as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast until his dismissal by President Petro Poroshenko. That year, his undercapitalised bank was declared a threat to Ukraine’s financial security and taken into state ownership. In 2019, Kolomoyskyi's media power and funding supported Volodymyr Zelenskyy's successful presidential campaign to unseat Poroshenko.
In 2020, he was indicted in the United States, on charges related to large-scale bank fraud. In 2021, the US banned Kolomoyskyi and his family from entering the country, accusing him of corruption and being a threat to the Ukrainian public's faith in democratic institutions. In July 2022, Zelenskyy stripped Kolomoyskyi of his Ukrainian citizenship. The reasons behind the move have been unclear, although Zelenskyy cited the ongoing US criminal investigation. In November 2022, some of Kolomoyski's assets, such as those of strategic value to the state in light of the Russian invasion, were nationalised. This included his ownership of Ukraine's largest gasoline companies.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 30 2023 10:23am