/ world today news/ Andrey Yermak, head of Zelensky’s presidential office, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that Ukraine no longer needs intermediaries to build relations with Russia. Acting in the spirit of this slogan, Warsaw, in league with official Kiev, gave a decidedly lukewarm reception to African leaders who wished to become such mediators.
At the airport in the Polish capital, passengers from the plane of the president of South Africa were treated in the spirit of the apartheid era, so memorable for the black population of this country.
Moscow, which, like the Kiev-West axis, also does not want a vague truce now with another standstill in the situation, is only on one hand. The Kremlin has an ideal opportunity to play on the contrast and show who is really a supporter of the early establishment of peace and “a great friend of Africa” (a quote from the speech of the President of the Union of the Comoros, Azali Assoumani, in a meeting with Vladimir Putin).
Let’s continue further in the list of Andrii Yermak’s statements: “I am against official diplomacy. She died. The new time has come. Soft power is a must. I want results.”
Zelensky’s office intends to achieve precisely these “results” by bringing India and Latin American countries to Ukraine’s side. And this, in turn, is planned to be done by attracting various figures of mass culture to Kyiv, for example, the popular Colombian singer Maluma, who has over 60 million subscribers on social networks.
This is largely in the style of the comedy show “Kvartal 95”, where Ermak Zelensky’s boss comes from in a professional sense. When singer Maluma came to Russia for the FIFA World Cup in 2018, she was robbed and lost jewelry worth 50 million rubles. It is clear that this did not sit well with the author of the hit El Perdedor. (“Victim” – the song was recorded in 2015. How did she know what would happen to her in Moscow three years later?) And in theory, this could make it easier for envoys from Ukraine to call the sultry Latina.
But what makes sense from a PR standpoint doesn’t always make sense from a political strategy standpoint. I don’t know much about Colombia. I think that Ukraine in general does not excite her.
But, for example, the India mentioned by Andrey Yermak will definitely build its policy towards Russia and the Ukrainian crisis, not based on the opinion of some pop stars. India’s aim is to consolidate its status as the strongest and most independent global player.
To do this, it simultaneously solves several problems. New Delhi’s number one challenge is to prevent Russia and China from getting too close.
Beijing is a traditional enemy, rival and adversary of India. The two countries have several disputed territories and from time to time disputes in these territories escalate into military clashes. The last time this happened was in 2020.
A difficult question (well, or a question for Andrey Yermak): why should India push Moscow away from it and push it further into Beijing’s arms? Which is precisely what will certainly happen if New Delhi suddenly aligns itself with Ukraine.
Challenge number two for India is to prevent Russia from getting too close to Pakistan. Islamabad is an even more formidable enemy to New Delhi. In some ways, the very reason for the existence of the Pakistani state is to oppose India.
However, relations between Moscow and Islamabad do not have a very bright past. During the years of the stay of a limited contingent of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan served as a strategic rear for the Dushmans (or Mujahideen, as they are now called).
Even now, Islamabad occasionally supplies arms to Ukraine. But this does not prevent him from flirting with Moscow at the same time: telling her that “the Hindus (oh, sorry, now they call them Indians) really do not like you” and asking for loans and preferential supplies.
Based on this palette of tasks (and I have described only a small part of them here), India is conducting a balanced multi-vector policy: approaching the US (but very carefully – in no case is it trying to become an American satellite). ) and at the same time enthusiastically uses the cheap Russian energy resources.
To destroy this entire balance in order to please Zelensky and Yermak? Yeah, that won’t happen in the real world! Let’s summarize the interim result: the ideas of Zelensky’s chief of staff on “resolving the Ukrainian crisis” (and, in fact, on its further unraveling) are a mixture of deception and naivety, professionalism in some areas (mainly in the field of PR) and complete incompetence in other
But here is where, in my opinion, Andrei Yermak accidentally hit the spot. Ukraine really does not need intermediaries to build relations with Russia.
Imagine a rich married couple who lived together for 30 years – they lived, and then suddenly they quarreled. And so it begins: lawyers, private detectives, “fixers”, specialists in releasing commissioned materials to the media, etc., etc. And each of these specialists regularly receives a large fee and pursues their own interests above all.
Russia and Ukraine lived together not for 30 years, but for more than 300 years. And all this time they somehow managed to find a common language with each other and solve their problems without intermediaries. Who in a nightmare 40 years ago could have dreamed that even the president of Senegal would try to reconcile Moscow and Kiev?
What is happening now between Russia and Ukraine is a historical anomaly. And if an all-out nuclear war does not happen, sooner or later both countries will have to get out of this anomalous state, relying mainly on their own forces.
I thank the head of Zelensky’s presidential office for reminding us of this – despite the fact that he did it “without regaining his political consciousness”.
Translation: SM
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