I’m not going to take a hard stance here cause I don’t think a side by side comparison with Putin is a useful conversation to have, but I want to point out a couple things that may add some nuance to what you’ve heard before.
- Since 1991, Ukraine has been in an increasingly precarious geopolitical position, with many differences among it’s population and political leadership about how to proceed. One could argue that Zelensky ended up stuck between a rock and a hard place, but at the end of the day his fumbling around and repeated motions towards joining NATO were bad political moves that nearly forced (kinda, maybe not forced idk) Russia’s hand into a military action. Even if going to NATO was definitively the correct choice (weird thing to think, tbh), he managed doing so incredibly poorly.
- Be aware that Ukraine has had a lot of division among the populaton about whether the country should be Western/EU aligned or Russian aligned. There are many historical and cultural reasons for different regions, communities and individuals to have their particular views (like any political stance). Consider that if you spoke with a Ukrainian person somewhere outside of Eastern Europe, and used the English language, they are probably going to have a pro-western, pro-zelensky viewpoint. You probably won’t hear much from Russian speaking Ukrainians who wouldn’t prefer to emigrate to “the West”, and support Ukrainian alignment with Russia.
Having spent SIGNIFICANT time in all parts of ukraine I can safely say they are a varied people. Russian speaking Ukrainians and non Russian speaking I heard numerous pro ussr and pro west ideas. Non of what you said points to zelensky being as bad as or worse than put in. Pretty much everyone likes him regardless of personal political feelings.
Sure, like I said I don’t think it’s really important who is “worse”, it’s not a useful topic of discussion.
I did want to make a couple of counterpoints though
- just cause Zelensky is popular, doesn’t necessarily make him a better leader. If we were to do a comparison (which we shouldn’t!) Putin is also widely popular along Russians. In both cases support for a wartime leader is going to rally, especially in Ukraine.
- you certainly have infinitely more experience in the country than I do (dividing by zero ofc haha), but wouldn’t you have run into some of the same biases coming in as a foreigner (or foreign-born)? I don’t know your itinerary, and I’m not asking you to share, but the who, when and where is gonna make a difference.
- as an example, I was interested in the interviews of the first two people in this video that I saw recently [watch starting at 3:15 till about 20 mins in]: https://youtu.be/drhgjxSJG6M located in the warzone in eastern Ukraine. Both are supportive of the Russian forces and appear to claim that such support in their local area is widespread.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/drhgjxSJG6M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Careful with that YouTube channel. Patrick Lancaster may be American, but everything he’s produced recently is essentially pro-Russian propaganda. Many (most?) of his videos are either misleading or staged.
