💙💙💛💛🇺🇦🌻🌻🌻 pic.twitter.com/vx6FKgqB2r
— Valeria (Val) (@BednarskyVal) December 5, 2023
Day: December 6, 2023
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is becoming an autocrat who is reshaping Ukraine into an authoritarian state no different than Russia, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has shockingly claimed.
Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxing champion-turned-politician, took the unprecedented step of publicly attacking Zelensky, an ex-comedian and actor, so vehemently for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 21 months ago.
While the pair have been political foes, such a blistering public condemnation was still shocking to many, given the country’s war crisis.
“At some point we will no longer be any different from Russia, where everything depends on the whim of one man,” Klitschko said in a new interview with the German news outlet Der Spiegel.
Klitschko, who has served as the mayor of Kyiv since 2014, praised his fellow mayors and regional governors for thwarting Ukraine’s descent into authoritarianism.
“There is currently only one independent institution, but enormous pressure is being exerted on it: local self-government,” he said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has sharply criticized President Volodymyr Zelensky for his handling of the war. Jack Hill/The Times, The Sunday Times/MEGA
Zelensky is accused of turning into an isolated autocrat not unlike Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Sindeyeve/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Klitschko, who has clashed with Zelensky since the start of the war over the poor state of Kyiv’s emergency shelters, claimed that the president has become isolated and that they never meet or speak to one another — even though their offices are located only a short distance apart.
In a separate sit-down with the Swiss news site 20Minutes, Klitschko accused Zelensky of lying to the public about Ukraine’s progress in the bloody conflict.
The mayor said he agreed with Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Ukrainian military’s commander in chief, when he said last month that the war had gone “into a stalemate” after a disappointing counteroffensive that failed to deliver a decisive blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxing champion, has clashed with Zelensky before over the state of Kyiv’s emergency shelters. REUTERS
Zaluzhnyi warned that the war could drag on for years and poured cold water over the prospect of a “beautiful breakthrough” – unless Ukraine comes up with a game-changer similar to the invention of gunpowder.
Zelensky bristled at Zaluzhnyi’s comments to The Economist, insisting that the conflict, despite slowing down in recent weeks, was anything but a “stalemate.”
“[Zaluzhnyi] told the truth,” Klitschko said. “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth. … Of course, we can euphorically lie to our people and our partners. But you can’t do that forever. Some of our politicians have criticized Zaluzhnyi for the clear words — wrongly. I stand behind him.”
Klitschko, 52, argued that Zelensky’s popularity has been declining since the start of the war in February 2022, when he emerged onto the world stage as the symbol of Ukraine’s struggle for survival — and the mayor predicted that the president will eventually find himself out of power as payback for his “mistakes.
“People see who’s effective and who’s not. And there were and still are a lot of expectations. Zelensky is paying for mistakes he has made,” the Kyiv mayor said.
Klitschko reprised a claim often repeated by Zelensky’s critics that Ukraine’s president downplayed the risk of a Russian invasion until it was too late, leaving the country badly unprepared for Putin’s occupying forces.
Klitschko backed Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the Ukrainian military’s commander in chief, who angered Zelensky by saying last month that the war was at a “stalemate.” REUTERS
“People wonder why we weren’t better prepared for this war, why Zelensky denied until the end that it would come to this,” he said.
During his wide-ranging interview with Der Spiegel, Klitschko praised local officials and not Zelensky’s administration for repelling Russian attacks in the first days and weeks of the war.
But despite his litany of grievances, the mayor stopped short of calling for Zelensky’s immediate ouster.
“The president has an important function today, and we have to support him until the end of the war,” Klitschko said. “But at the end of this war, every politician will pay for his successes or failures.”
Zelensky’s office has not publicly responded to Klitschko’s jabs.
But in his nightly address to the nation Monday, Zelensky appeared to take a veiled swipe at his critics, saying that he was grateful “to those who do not put their personal interests above the interests of the Ukrainian state.”
Volodymyr Zelensky unexpectedly cancelled his address to the US Senate where he would have appealed for fresh aid for the war in Ukraine, majority leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday.
Kyiv’s calls for multi-billion dollar military funding have been rejected by the Congress, leaving Ukraine out in the cold.
The war-time president has been pleading with his allies in the West for financial and military help against Russian forces as Moscow’s invasion clocked 650 days. The US is now showing signs of fatigue and disapproval for funding the war.
The calls for aid for Ukraine clashed with the Republicans’ demand for additional border funding, halting any further inflow of money into the war.
Mr Schumer said the Ukrainian leader cancelled his virtual appearance at the Senate’s closed-door briefing after “something came up at the last minute”. Earlier in the day, the US House majority leader said Mr Zelensky was scheduled to give a classified briefing and address the senators by video.
President Joe Biden’s administration had invited Mr Zelensky to address the senators so they “could hear directly from him precisely what is at stake”.
Ukraine could soon find itself without US help as the clock is ticking on the $106bn funding request from the White House for the wars in Ukraine, Israel, and other security needs without support from Republicans.
The US has already run out of money that it has used to prop up Ukraine’s economy, and “if Ukraine’s economy collapses, they will not be able to keep fighting, full stop”, said Shalanda Young, Office of Management and Budget director, in a letter to House and Senate leaders.
She warned that the US will run out of funding to send weapons and assistance to Ukraine by the end of the year, saying that would “kneecap” Ukraine on the battlefield.
“We are out of money – and nearly out of time,” she wrote in the letter.
The Biden administration sent an urgent warning on Monday about the need to approve the military and economic assistance to Ukraine, saying Kyiv’s war effort to defend itself from Russia’s invasion may grind to a halt without it.
The blockade from the US – Kyiv’s primary ally against Russian invasion for 22 months – spells dangers of Russia’s advance on the battlefield as Moscow’s troops pick up pace after getting military help from North Korea and Iran in recent shipments.
Any postponement of aid from the US would create the “big risk” that Ukraine will lose the nearly two years of Russia’s war on its territory, Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff said.
If the aid is postponed, “it gives the big risk that we can be in the same position to which we’re located now,” Andriy Yermak said. “And of course, it makes this very high possibility impossible to continually liberate and give the big risk to lose this war.”
If Ukraine loses, the US would be responsible for the defeat, US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said.
“I’ve talked to members of Congress, my colleagues have. I think they understand that this is a dire situation and we can hold ourselves responsible for Ukraine’s defeat if we don’t manage to get this funding to Ukraine that’s needed, and I’m including direct budget support here because that’s utterly essential,” Ms Yellen said.
The funding, especially for Ukraine’s general government budget support, was “utterly essential” and a pre-condition to keep the International Monetary Fund support flowing to Ukraine.
“Ukraine is just running out of money,” she said, adding that the war-hit nation would cease to have any schools or hospitals if the US doesn’t financially back them as they are “spending more than every penny they’re taking in, in tax revenue, on military salaries and defence”.
Congress already has allocated $111bn (£88bn) to assist Ukraine, including $67bn (£53bn) in military procurement funding, $27bn (£21bn) for economic and civil assistance and $10bn (£7.9bn) for humanitarian aid. Ms Young wrote that all of it, other than about 3 per cent of the military funding, had been depleted by mid-November.
The war in Ukraine has entered its second winter where military experts and officials monitoring the war are anticipating a fresh round of heavy Russian missile attacks on Kyiv’s civilian and energy infrastructure to shadow the war-hit nation in dark and sub-zero temperatures.
The military aid, financial help, training of troops and ammunition tranches from the US and other western allies has kept Ukraine afloat so far but the battlefield has not shifted this year despite heavy fighting.
Washington
In response to the decision of Ukrainian authorities to deport Azerbaijani activist and blogger Elvin Isayev from the country, a week before the state visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Azerbaijan, Freedom House issued the following statement:
“Isayev’s sudden deportation from Ukraine on unsubstantiated grounds reflects the Ukrainian government’s prioritization of its relationship with an economically important dictatorship over the rule of law, especially in light of a recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights requiring the Russian Federation not to deport him back to Azerbaijan,” said Marc Behrendt, director of Freedom House’s Europe and Eurasia programs. “The Azerbaijani government’s targeting of its critics abroad, including through the use of political pressure, extradition requests, and INTERPOL “red notice” requests, extends the country’s ability to attack critics and dissidents beyond its borders. Isayev’s detention in Azerbaijan without charge or due process is unacceptable. We call on the Azerbaijan authorities to release him immediately.”
Background:
Elvin Isayev, an Azerbaijani blogger and activist, was swiftly deported from Ukraine on December 12 on grounds of “violating immigration laws,” according to a press release from the State Migration Service of Azerbaijan. Upon arriving in Azerbaijan on December 14, Isayev was placed in a pretrial holding cell based on a Baku court ruling issued on August 22. Besides the statement from the State Migration Service, the Azerbaijani government has not explained on what grounds Isayev was arrested, or what charges he faces.
Isayev had previously resided in Russia since 1998, where he regularly criticized Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on his blog and other social media platforms for acts of repression and corruption. He was stripped of his Russian citizenship based on a St. Petersburg court ruling on August 26, and faced deportation to Azerbaijan. An interim decision of the European Court of Human Rights under “Rule 39” suspended his deportation on the grounds that forcing Isayev to return to Azerbaijan could cause him irreparable harm.
While Ukrainian media outlets and civil society organizations have acknowledged his disappearance and demanded his immediate release, the Ukrainian government has not yet commented on Isayev’s deportation. Isayev’s extradition comes ahead of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s visit to Azerbaijan, planned for December 16–18.
Ukraine is rated Partly Free in Freedom in the World 2019 and Partly Free in Freedom on the Net 2019. Azerbaijan is rated Not Free in Freedom in the World 2019 and Not Free in Freedom on the Net 2019.