That Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a darling of the West is an open secret. Ever since his country went into war with Russia in February 2022, Zelensky has been to Western capitals and hosted many leaders from the West in his country.

Zelensky’s major strength is his gift of the gab which. It would explain how he used his eloquence to catapult himself from a comedian and actor to the sixth Ukrainian president in 2019. However, politics has its limits. In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, United States on September 19, Zelensky was in his element. He had a captive global audience of heads of state and government, and rose up to the occasion by condemning his neighbouring adversary, and galvanising global condemnation against Russia.

Zelensky’s Western drafted one sided narrative is no longer tenable. Since the war started, Zelensky has never addressed the historical cause of the war, a conflict that would have been resolved by now in a roundtable conference.

The Ukrainian president has been in denial though. By now he should have realised that he is just a pawn whose country is being used as a bulwark by Western powers to compromise Russia’s sovereignty by giving the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) some leeway on the former’s eastern border.

Zelensky should have told UNGA that he had paid a heavy toll for his friendship with NATO and Ukraine has been gradually turned into a shell dotted with graveyards of the needless death of his countrymen. Thousands of Ukrainian troops and civilians alike have either lost their lives or wounded since February last year. More than six million Ukrainians are now either internally displaced or living as refugees away from their country. The country’s economy has also been crippled.

The US and West in general have never made it a secret that their plan is to fight and destroy communism. The fall of the Soviet Union, the German reunification between the East and the West, and the overthrow of several communist leaning heads of state and government, particularly in post-independence Africa, have the hallmarks of the West’s modus operandi.  

Zelensky should have been brutally honest and told the UNGA that the economic sanctions against Russia have actually boomeranged. Russia has withstood pressure from the sanctions and recovered from the initial shock meted by the Western powers. During a recent meeting on the Russian 2024-26 federal budget, President Vladimir Putin said “Russia’s GDP has reached the level of 2021” and “may grow by 2.8 per cent by the end of the year.”

Moreover, Zelensky should have stated during the UNGA, the sanctions have hurt everyone. The current high food and fuel prices globally have been attributed to the Russia-Ukraine war. Both rich economies in the Global North and poor and emerging economies in the Global South are reeling from the tremendous increase in the cost of living.

Again, contrary to the impression Zelensky gave at the UNGA, this war will not end in the near future if no peaceful negotiations are held to end it as soon as possible. Indeed, the president should have some serious soul searching and admit that the continuation of this war is not in Ukraine’s best interests. He does not need to continue begging for weapons from the West to do their bidding.

These are some of the hard truths that Zelensky should gather the courage to articulate when he speaks in the next international forum. He should tell the West to stop exacerbating the war by flooding him with weapons. Ultimately, Zelensky needs to own up that the only way to peace, as proposed elsewhere, includes immediate ceasefire, dialogue, security guarantees for Russia, protection of civilians, and the upholding of territorial integrity between the two countries.

—  The writer is a PhD candidate in International Relations