Puppeteers Fighting Among Themselves...,

unz  |  But the largest feather in Kholomoisky’s cap is no doubt President Zelensky himself. Kholomoisky’s channel created and ran the “Servant of the People” show that featured Zelensky as an honest and intrepid President of Ukraine dedicated to fighting corruption and defending the Ukrainian people. When the elections came around, Kholomoisky’s people and his media resources went all out in campaigning for their man. My personal favorite play was when they bribed Facebook fortune-tellers to spin prophecies about the coming of the president-that-was-promised and thereby secured the superstitious peasant granny vote. If any Western politicians are reading this, put down Sun Tzu and try some of this Kholomoisky fellow’s stratagems during the next election cycle instead.

Now, Russia has declared that they are planning to do a thorough “denazification” campaign, which almost certainly means a thorough purge of the Galician faction from the positions that they have taken since Yushenko let them into the government. As for what will happen to the oligarchs who bankrolled this whole operation, well, that’s still somewhat up in the air. It’s worth point out that Russia used to have dealings with them right up until the events of Euromaidan. The arrangement was simple: Russia paid them to behave and not ally against Russia with the West. As we can see looking back, this was clearly a catastrophic strategy, and what’s worse, I can only shake my head at how uncreative and uninspired it was—a cardinal sin in my book. The worst possible outcome for Ukraine at this point is if Russia comes to a compromise with some element of the existing power structure in Ukraine once they wrap up the military operation. We now know that no negotiations with the Galician faction are possible, so we can cross them off the list. That leaves the Eastern Mafia. Rumors of Kholomoisky’s imminent surrender aside, I can’t help but hope that his chutzpah has finally crossed the line and that he will be forced to spend the rest of his days exiled in Israel along with his puppet Zelensky. As for the rest of the oligarchs, well, both Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Timoshenko held photo-ops in Kiev with Kalashnikovs in their hands, so we can cross them off the list as well. Further than that and we enter the realm of pure speculation.

Clearly, the best outcome would be for a military man from Russia with no history of doing politics or business in Ukraine to come in and take the reins as a vizier or military governor of sorts for a time. This solution may offend committed ideologists and apologists for Liberal Democracy (read: Oligarchy), but the hard truth of the situation that Ukraine finds itself in is one in which literally no one who was anywhere near the reins of power in that country for the last three decades has his hands clean. These people all looted, collaborated and murdered with near impunity for 30 years. With Russia now performing a political prison break from Liberal Oligarchic Occupation Government right before our very eyes, we can only hope that Ukraine will be able to follow suit and break free from the shackles as well.