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This is nothing compared to other Ukrainian public relation efforts.
First there was picking American transgender woman as official spokesperson for Ukrainian army, who then went on unhinged rant threatening to kill "Russian propagandists" all over the world.
(speaking in English, not Russian, so it is clear that it were not Russians in Russia who were target of this threat)
This speech is there, it is something you will hear from mouth of cartoon Evil Mastermind(TM) in corny B movie, just before Action Hero(TM) storms in and drops the villain into his/her/their/zir/xir own shark tank.
Someone in charge then noticed this does not make Ukraine look exactly like Avengers team and decided to suspend Cirillo.
So sanity prevailed and all will be good (optics) from now?
Well, Zelensky just decided to make honorary "ambassador of Ukraine", of all people, Marina Abramovic, world famous performance artist.
It sounds like 4chan fake news prank, but it is real, reported by mainstream media(and then vanishing from their pages).
Ukraine knows well what it is doing, Ukraine tries hard to signal it is on the right side and win hearts and minds.
Hearts and minds of people who matter, not yours.
edit: links
No shit. They need cash and weapons now, not the support of internet contrarians who will always hate them because they had the audacity to be invaded by the Russians.
Zelensky is playing the American culture war. This isn't an indictment of Zelensky, who is in a desperate position. But it's an interesting glimpse into who really matters (and who doesn't). In Zelensky's belief, pandering to the most ridiculous beliefs of American leftists is a winning strategy. I think he's wrong about this, but it's revealing glimpse into the state of affairs.
Why do you think it is wrong? On the one side, he may gain some support from people to whom the White House may listen. On the other side, he loses the support of people who has repeatedly declared they hate him and won't give him a dime anyway. Why do you think his strategy is wrong? Not from American, but from purely transactional side with the goal of getting the most help possible the fastest way possible?
It is possible that part of the establishment does listen to the right. The movement shitting on vaccines and lockdowns was shut upon but eventually things moved a little bit more in line with their view.
By pissing plenty of people online, and acting unreasonably, Zelensky is influencing people who matter too.
Plus it matters to his country who he panders to. You aren't Ukrainian neither incidentally, and Ukraine is not a democracy.
Most importantly this kind of logic you are promoting of it doesn't matter what you do so long you pander to the far left leads to very dark path and it does imply that the people who you act as they don't matter have a license to act in a more brazzen way so they actually can matter. Just like you and the people you support like Zelensky, and the people who he aligns with have been acting quite aggressively.
People can be diplomatic with it, but we haven't yet degenerated to the point that no matter how unreasonable you are if you align with a certain faction, you won't lose support. Indeed, like most obsessions of parts of American establishment, whether covid, russiagate, or indeed foreign conflicts, eventually they will focus on a new current thing.
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I think he's losing mainstream Republicans who were firmly on Ukraine's side before.
I feel it's more the reverse - more Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon of "we are sending billions to Ukraine while (insert your actual point)" - which btw is a good example of "technically true as accounting goes but wildly misleading in substance" - mostly because it's easy and resonates with certain contingent. And that locks them into anti-Ukraine position, because you can't say that and then vote for sending more help to Ukraine - you'd be called a blowhard and a hypocrite (which most politicians are, but they hate that fact being highlighted). And given that, Zelensky doesn't have any incentive to take them into account anymore - if they are locked in into a position that doesn't help him anyway, they are lost cause, and there's no reason not to suck up to their enemies - with those at least there's a chance.
Misleading how? We now know for certain that billions are being spent to payroll Ukraine's entire civil service as well as provide direct subsidies to small businesses. It is definitively not all expired weapons writeoffs.
Again, these are very vague "billions are being spent". Which billions we are talking about? There are military aid packages. There are non-military aid packages. There are US money. There are World bank money. There are European money. If you want to audit that and point out certain spending you object to - fine, but you can't seriously discuss it in the format "our children are starving while Ukraine gets billions" - because children wouldn't benefit neither from stopping HIMARS shipments to Ukraine (children, even very hungry ones, can't eat a HIMARS rocket [citation needed]), not from stopping World Bank programs - because those programs, if not going to Ukraine, wouldn't be directed to the starving children you care so much about. If there's specific objection to specific spending - fine, it's completely OK to discuss it, but talking about all the financial help altogether as an amorphous blob of "billions" that can be freely converted and directed to any purpose is exactly what I call misleading. It doesn't work this way.
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