Should Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky have been more open with his people about U.S. warnings about Russian invasion preparations? Zelensky defends the decision, saying if he had done otherwise, Vladimir Putin’s forces would have conquered his country in three days.
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18 replies on “Zelenksy’s Dilemma: Ukraine Leader Kept Quiet U.S. Warnings of Coming Russian Invasion”
Bill has the moral clarity on this issue
Nope. The people had a right to know. They could have moved their children out. But beyond that, what makes Zelensky more important than his underlings? We The Peeps have the right to know such things.
The case has been made (and vigorously disputed) that FDR knew that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and, not only kept it from US, but also deployed our military to encourage it. The object being that it was the only way he could get US in the war. If so, at least he kept the fleet carriers safely out of harm’s way…
Americans tend to stand their ground because if the retreat they drown. No one flees a fight to Canada or Mexico unless they are on the far left. From sea to shining sea does mean you have very big moats and running away is hard. Ukraine’s land boarders made a policy of evacuating the vulnerable the easy option. Remember the London blitz evacuations.
They did start doing that months before the Russians attacked. Whole retirement communities went on “European tours” This made standing up the rest as warrior’s possible. The strategy of not triggering a panic but evacuating quietly is wise.
Yes there were thousand stranded particularly in the north east and east but these people did not leave because they did not care who ruled Kiev. These northern and eastern populations had not voted for Zelenskyy. A third were pro-Russian, a third were the hardline Avov people, a third were so woke and self obsessed leftists that they did not even know here was a war on until day 2.
The smartest Ukrainians appear to have evacuated to western Ukraine west of Lviv and Odesa but not left the country. I suspect that the towns in those areas have already doubled in size and will develop into major cities.
Some think Putin started and is prolonging the war and allowing the casualties to change the demography of Russia. The biggest long term threat to Russia is the fact that the Slavic Russians are not having families. They are having a lot of sex but not marrying and having 2 to 3 children; the replacement family size needed. The non Slav population, who are mostly Muslim, Protestant or Roman Catholic not Russian Orthodox or atheist are having 3 to 5 children per woman. 20% of Moscow is now Muslim.
As well as Slav’s there are Finno-Russians in the north and Urals and all the Turkic, Uzbek, Kazakh, etc in the south and southern Urals, in the east the Siberians that do not see themselves as Russian or Slavic are out breeding the Russians. Russia’s ability to bribe and bully these non Russians cost money and Russian, particularly the pan Slavist factions are heavily sanctioned and more inclined to drink than work hard.
Essentially the Russian population is now a minority in its own continental empire. There are millions of non Slavs of fighting age that in ten years would have the Slavs out numbered 2 to 1 on a war of separation. The Pan-Slavic faction and Dugin’s Eurasianism faction do not believe the Volga valley and its people can survive without empire. They are wrong, I believe, but a religious and cultural reformation would be required not just politics.
Facing demographic decline Putin is trying to send the non Slavs to their doom in Ukraine where 5 “Russians” die for every Ukrainian killed. At the same time loyal Slavs, Eurasianists, etc are being held back in the rear. However some in the Duma, some semi-autonomous states and many in the military have worked out that they are being intentionally decimated. They are refusing Putin but in subtle and quiet ways. An overt refusal could get even a Duma member arrested or assassinated. Belarus, Chechenia and Dagestan have all claimed newish border threats as a reason for not sending troops Putin has requested.
I saw video of Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian politicians making the warnings Bill asks for before the invasion so I think both the News organization and Bill and the boys are misinterpreting his statement. I would not be surprised if there is a subtle language error there. I know of Ukrainian’s who left and came to Australia well before the Russians came across the border. There were ample warnings particularly among the Ukrainian left and pro Russian factions. Those are the people that Zelenshyy probably wanted well gone early but only half left. The other half got stranded expecting a quick and quiet Russian win.
It can be argued that the debate was really about whether the Russians were ready and could succeed with that weapon and logistics mix. The assumption that Putin was sane and knew his military is unprepared. With the progress of the war it has been shown that the Russians really were not ready but Putin went anyway. We do not know if that was bad intel on Putin’s desk or that he is so desperate that he did not know really does not matter.
Also there is another factor in play. Trump had helped Ukraine prepare and Ukraine developed some amazing weapons, the Bayraktars, the Stugna’s, they seem to have bought Europe’s entire stock of eastern European decoy aircraft and tanks. If Zelenskyy had made the speech Bill recommended Putin’s people bight have looked harder and spotted the waiting ambush.
There are too many variables to say at this point Zelensky should have done things differently.
Ukrainians are not Americans and one big problem Americans have is thinking that everyone else is like us and wants what we want. Everyone is not like us and not everyone wants what we want. This is something I learned from actually personally interacting with other people around the world.
That’s not to say those people aren’t as ‘good’ as us or what they want is bad for them or us. It’s not a superior vs. inferior thing, it’s a matter of perspective. Things look differently from the most wealthy and powerful country in the world. That’s just a simple fact. The last time I came home from overseas I knew it would be the last time and I was very, very glad of that. I’m happy to never ever leave the borders of the U.S. again. It’s good to be home in America knowing I’ll never have to leave home again.
Other people don’t see things that way.
I didn’t see things that way earlier on in my travels. I learned to see things the way I do through the experiences I had. I’ve known a, pardon my ‘French’, shit-ton of people who “went native”. Who adopted the culture and values of the foreign country they were serving in. This isn’t necessarily because those foreign countries were any ‘better’ than the U.S. It was more a fact of their being different than us and people adopting the difference because it’s something different, and because they think it’s more sophisticated to adopt a novel (to them) perspective.
Jesus put it well when He said “A prophet gets no honor in his own country.” People tend to take things for granted that are familiar to them, even when those things they’re taking for granted are exceptional and preferable.
I never ‘went native’ no matter where I was and I absolutely critically examined the politics, standards, values and cultures of the places where I travelled. I’m acutely aware of those things in the U.S. and so was also acutely aware of those influences on foreign societies too. I’ve been over the better part of the globe (excluding Chinese Asia) and in my not-so-humble opinion the United States stands head and shoulders above everywhere else, warts and all.
So I can’t say that what Zelensky did was wrong for his place and time. Thankfully that’s not a call I have to make and history will judge him far more critically than we can.
A lot depends on the quality of the character of the person in question. I’ve known and worked with some FBI people and they were good men and true, men of the highest integrity and moral standards. It was a privilege to spend time with such admirable men. (They also had their faults, they could be pretty damned arrogant and their arrogance was seldom justified in real world terms. That didn’t make them less admirable, it made them a PITA sometimes though. We all have faults, if lack of faults were the criteria for being a good person there would be no good people.) We all know what the FBI is up to today and every bit of the evil that organization is now engaged in is due to failures in the quality of the character of leadership.
The bottom line is the quality of Zelensky’s character. If his character is good and he did the best he could, making his decisions based on factors involving what’s best for others and his nation and not himself, then he deserves some slack even if it turns out he was wrong. Of course if he was right there’s no better vindication than the right thing happening for the right reasons by the right tactics that yields the right results. It’s not an ‘ends justifies the means’ situation, it’s a ‘making the right call and things worked out well’ thing.
Bill didn’t change my mind on this. I’ll go with Steve on this one but only history will will tell us the correct answer.
The American people have an over 200-year track record of rising to the occasion. Ukraine’s population does not. It would have been an unwarranted gamble to trust them. Also, since Zalensky is so thoroughly corrupt, he sees everybody else that way (just like “our” Leftists project all of their despicabilities onto DECENT people). He realizes that continued Ukrainian independence keeps his personal gravy train coming. That instills a much stronger incentive in him than in the average Ukrainian citizen.
It is also at least legitimate to measure a decision on metrics other than the number of lives lost. France achieved “peace” on June 24, 1940, but was it a peace that helped the French people? It is at least debatable. “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.”
If we had intel starting in the fall of 2021, it seems that one can draw a pretty direct line from removing sanctions on Nord Stream 2 to Putin planning an invasion of Ukraine just a few months later.
Both emboldened him and enriched him.
I bet know one has asked Slo Jo about that.
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Winston Churchill.
The matter at hand is as described in the podcast but there are several other considerations any leader should have before revealing the knowledge. If the temper of the people is passivity, revealing the information may stimulate them to greater resistance. It is reasonable to expect, indeed hope, that non-combatants of any sort will remove themselves from the area and the military move in and prepare defenses. The cost will be high in a number of ways, but also it would be reasonable to limit withdrawals from the banking system, since a single group of banks in a particular geographic area is not essential to the general economy. It is reasonable to create resources for those displacing. Just as we alert people to hurricanes, there is no reason, even if only a few months are available for planning, not to provide safe corridors and resources.
Suppose the Russians did not invade? Suppose only those civilians who remained wished to join Russia? What of the insurgents/rebels who have been fighting in Lugansk and Donetsk for 8 years, seeking separation from Ukraine and joining with Russia? Preparation likely would not have deterred Russia, but if it had, the Ukrainian forces placed in anticipation of an invasion could be used to fight the separatists more “cleanly”, even if that action would have “provoked” Russia to invade in support of the rebels and remaining population. Remember the demographics of both regions.
Ultimately, as Bill said, a leader’s responsibility is to LEAD, and that is accomplished by using the information at hand to lead the people to actions. If the Ukrainians did not want to fight, what purpose does resistance even offer? If they did, would they not have been more focused on fighting than worrying about getting their families out of harm’s way? The hurricane was coming. One must prepare.
Excellent point! It’s not like military intel is an exact science or has a flawless record. Further, he had al least some good reasons for not trusting the American intel community (although maybe fewer reasons than WE have).
Thank you for the comment.
Don’t know how it might have turned out if done differently, but certainly Roosevelt was aware of Japan’s likely oncoming belligerence, if not Pearl Harbor specifically, yet he did not advise the American People of such imminent peril.
It is remarkable that we are being given this kind of information in ‘real time’, while the war is still going on and the end is no where in sight. We’re getting bits and pieces, though. It will be years before someone takes the time to objectively study this situation and presents a history of it that will be reliable. Plenty of commentary right now, often very biased, on both sides. I doubt that any world leader in WWII would have sat for this kind of interview, and I know there was plenty of obfuscation going on that kept the public ignorant and hopeful, when knowing the truth would have jeopardized the war effort itself. It’s always a calculated risk. Do you live out your ideals of truth and belief in American integrity, or do you temper that with an honest assessment of human frailty and choose to hide details that may cost some their lives or at least their livelihoods. Not a decision for the frivolous, and my heart goes out to any leader who faces these choices.
I also think it’s difficult to expect the same thing of Ukrainian leaders as we’d expect of our leaders. Can we be humble enough to put ourselves in their situation with their history and experiences and recognize that we may not have done as well in the same situation? Look at our own current leadership. Much of what we talk about on this website is regarding the rank incompetence and corruption of our own leaders. I’m not very confident that we’d make as good a showing as the Ukrainians if we were in their situation. Our military is second to none, but our leadership at this point in time is humiliatingly awful. I can’t imagine Biden standing in harm’s way, surrounded by his cabinet, and cheerfully rallying the nation to stand and defend the nation.
Scott’s beautiful summation aside, winners write the history. Zelensky’s case will benefit from Russia’s woeful strategic decisions, hollowed out military, and uninspired soldier-class. Similarly, it will suffer from Biden’s ongoing, unfortunate gastrointestinal problem. He can’t stop “Putin”.
LOL