Send in the Clown

In Speech Before Congress, Zelenskyy Begs Imperialists for More War Machines

On 21 December 2022 Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the comedian-president of Ukraine, was flown on a U.S. Air Force jet out of his war-devastated country to beg for alms from his American masters in front of the U.S. Congress. Zelenskyy is the representative of the fascist-infiltrated government in Kiev and serves at the pleasure of a loose coalition of Banderite leaders — men who profess loyalty to the vision of the ultranationalist, antisemite, and murderer Stepan Bandera who organized mass executions during World War II. Before his televised debut, Zelenskyy stopped over at the White House to receive assurances from the decaying Joe Biden that the Banderite government of Kiev would continue to receive U.S. support. The U.S. imperialists, through their gerontocrat mouthpiece Biden, announced that they would not abandon the U.S. commitment to Ukraine. Indeed, the mobile corpse at the head of the U.S. executive said that he had “never seen NATO or the EU more united about anything at all.”

With these promises in hand, Zelenskyy delivered his speech to the U.S. ruling  classes with a bald-faced recognition of the truth — ”Americans won this victory.” Despite the fact that Ukraine is even now being reduced to a smoldering ruin, despite the fact that millions and billions of dollars in war machinery and materiel is being destroyed, Zelenskyy began by recognizing the power of the U.S. propaganda machine. He praised that the “victory” Ukraine has already won is, in Zelenskyy’s own words, a “hearts and minds” victory, a triumph of propaganda and intelligence. He thanked, in essence, the most powerful media presence in the world. With the U.S. imperialist war-lobbying machine at his side, how can he lose? In fact, by June of 2022, Ukraine had already lost 50% of its military equipment. On June 13 one of Zelenskyy’s advisors, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted that Ukraine needed at least 1,000 howitzers, 300 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles, and 1,000 additional drones.

An estimate of Western-donated totals indicates somewhere around 200 howitzers, 51 MLRS, 250 tanks, and 700 armored vehicles have made it into Ukraine.
Zelenskyy went on to use the language of decolonization to describe Ukraine: Yet we have to do whatever it takes to ensure that countries of the Global South also gain such victory.” He hasn’t lost his gift for comedy! The “Global South” is dominated and colonized by the very U.S. Empire that Zelenskyy serves. The largest, most powerful empire in the world can’t “decolonize” anything!

This battle is not only for territory, for this or another part of Europe. The battle is not only for life, freedom and security of Ukrainians or any other nation which Russia attempts to conquer. This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren.

Here, Zelenskyy appeared to be auditioning for yet another role — the battered president standing up against fascists, painting the Russian Federation with the same brush as Nazi Germany. This kind of rhetoric harkens to the world-shattering conflicts of World War I and II and, in good European style, Zelenskyy casts this war as one between democracy and destruction, between a free way of life and a dictatorship. But, like everything else in his presidency, for Zelenskyy this is nothing more than an act; this is no war between democracy and totalitarianism. Zelenskyy’s own government is shot through with fascists, and this big man of democracy role is merely a kind of sleight of hand. The real script is being written by the heirs of Stepan Bandera. Only a comedian could, with a straight face, defend the erection of statues to the antisemite and murderer of Poles Bandera, whose paramilitary Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists killed 35,000 Ukrainian Jews and between 50,000 and 100,000 Poles.  A fine deflection from his own Banderite government!

It’s of no small moment that Zelenskyy stood before the U.S. Congress to make this impassioned but bankrupt plea. It was the U.S. Empire and its machinations that put Ukraine on the frontlines. It is the insatiable drive of the U.S. imperialists for the natural resources of the Russian Federation, the pathological refusal of the U.S. ruling class to integrate Russia into the world-imperialist machine, and the bloody-minded desire of U.S. Cold Warriors who were sad to see the war end in their favor that put Ukraine on the path to war. For thirty years, the U.S. Empire has manipulated little Ukraine. The president of that embattled country must come to the U.S. and nowhere else to hold out his cap and beg for bullets, guns, bombs, even nuclear war. After all, Zelenskyy merely asked the U.S. to hold up the bargain its agents have been whispering in his ear since he took office. Make us like you, he says. Make us part of the imperialist West. And if his countrymen down to the last must die to fulfill the Banderite ambition? So what!

Zelenskyy went on to describe the Russian onslaught. “Every inch of that land is soaked in blood; roaring guns sound every hour. Trenches in the Donbass change hands several times a day in fierce combat, and even hand fighting.” But who, oh President Zelenskyy, invited that war? Who was it that loudly courted NATO, that loudly asked for the U.S. Empire to involve itself in the affairs of Ukraine? Whose government was it that waged a war of ethnic cleansing in the Donbass for the past three years? Oh, well, of course, Mr. Zelenskyy has nothing to say on those subjects.

But he admits that the Russian forces “have a significant advantage in artillery. They have an advantage in ammunition. They have much more missiles and planes than we have ever had.” The unspoken corollary: the U.S. must make up the deficit. You got us into this, Zelenskyy says without saying, now it’s up to you to get us out.

Of course, Zelenskyy couldn’t help but accuse the Russian Federation of what Ukraine itself has done. As early as February, Zelenskyy was releasing the prisoners in Ukraine to form penal battalions to fight the Russians. Yet, the comedian-president said to the Congress that “They [the Russians] sent convicts to the war.” And again, he cannot resist the comparison of Russian president Vladimr Putin to the Nazis: “[J]ust like the brave American soldiers which held their lines and fought back Hitler’s forces during the Christmas of 1944… [b]rave Ukrainian soldiers are doing the same to Putin’s forces this Christmas.”

But President Zelenskyy reminded Congress that the $68 billion USD sent by the Congress up to November 2022 is not enough money to win the war. “Financial assistance is also critically important.” The gross domestic product of Ukraine is only $200 billion USD; Zelenskyy warns that the entire output of the country is insufficient to win the war.

And what does winning look like, to this comedian president? “Ukraine has already offered proposals which I have just discussed with President Biden,” he said. Peace to President Zelenskyy looks like the Russian Federation voluntarily cutting the price of its gas and oil, guaranteeing food exports from Ukraine, releasing all of its prisoners, delivering over the sovereign regions of Donetsk and Luhansk back to Ukrainian war criminals and Banderite fascists, withdrawing all troops, submitting to an internal war crimes tribunal, and signing a peace treaty. Victory, in other words, is the complete capitulation of the Russian Federation and the return of the Banderite militias to the Donbass where they will continue to murder unopposed.

Zelenskyy, who once told a reporter that the fact that he was Jewish “barely makes 20 in [his] long list of faults,” under whose administration statues of the notorious antisemite and killer Stepan Bandera have multiplied, whose administration is staffed by open far-right fascists, demands that the U.S. help his government reconquer the Donbass so those same fascists can return to their ethnic cleansing. So much for the vaunted democracy and freedom! He then went on to say “We’ll celebrate Christmas. Celebrate Christmas even if there’s no electricity.” Throughout his speech he said the word Christmas no less than nine times.

At a time when the decrepit Biden White House has proved its value to the U.S. capitalist class by crushing the railroad workers movement, at a time when the consumer price index in the U.S. is soaring and inflation is spiraling out of control, at a time when student debt relief was dangled only to be canceled, at a time when the domestic population of the U.S. Empire desperately needs some kind of monetary relief, Biden and the other cronies of the big capitalists have chosen to spend over $60 billion in war machinery, ammunition, and supplies for the Ukrainian army rather than to give any relief to the U.S. working classes. Zelenskyy is their reasoning. The rugged face of the handsome actor-president serves as a stand-in for argumentation. It now merely needs to flash his photograph in the news or mention his name on the radio for standing ovations and tearful protestations of loyalty to Ukraine to spill from the lips of regular U.S. citizens (nearly always in the form of the fascist phrase Slava Ukraini).

This is a war against Russia; this is a war against the Empire’s European partners; but this is also a war against the working class. It is a war against the working class in Russia, which suffers. It is a war against the working class in Ukraine, which chafes under the fascist yoke. It is a war against the working class in the U.S. Empire, which must make sacrifices so the U.S. government can enact its capitalist masters’ bloody will in Eastern Europe and remake the map of the world.

We must not be duped by Washington or Kiev. When they send in the clowns, we must be prepared with the real facts that led to this conflict. When they cry crocodile tears about human rights abuses, we must remind them who created the abuses, who funded the murderous fascists that perpetuate them, who even now send money and materiel to them so they can continue their depravities. We are not fooled by the funny man from Ukraine.

Washington, we see your hand in the shadows.