Zelensky feels “betrayed” by his Western backers, who have denied him the support and attention he has grown used to, his aides told Time magazine. According to the report, published on Monday, the president’s circle now see him as “delusional” and the conflict with Russia as impossible to win.
Zelensky and his advisors spoke to the US magazine after the Ukrainian president visited Washington last month. Unlike the hero’s welcome he received last December, the most recent visit saw Zelensky grilled about corruption in Ukraine and forbidden from addressing lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Despite US President Joe Biden’s pledge to support Kiev “for as long as it takes”, Congress has failed to agree on a new aid bill for Ukraine. Ten days after Zelensky returned to Kiev from Washington, lawmakers managed to pass a spending bill to avert a government shutdown, but only after stripping $6 billion in Ukraine funding from it.
“Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it,” Time wrote, citing a member of his team.
“The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” Zelensky said, adding, “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time’.”
Zelensky told Time that he still believes that his forces can defeat Russia on the battlefield, and that he will not entertain any negotiations with Moscow, despite Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive failing to achieve its objectives and resulting in what the magazine called “enormous losses”. According to the most recent Russian figures, the Ukrainian military lost more than 90,000 men between early June and the beginning of this month.
“He deludes himself,” one of Zelensky’s closest aides told Time, adding, “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”
The outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war has drawn the attention of the West away from Kiev in recent weeks, with the Pentagon surging troops and weapons to the Middle East and US House Speaker Mike Johnson prioritizing a vote on military aid to the Jewish state instead of Ukraine.
“It’s logical,” Zelensky told Time, adding that while “the world’s help is needed” in Israel, “we lose out.”
