{"id":209574,"date":"2022-04-18T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=209574"},"modified":"2022-04-17T10:56:48","modified_gmt":"2022-04-17T09:56:48","slug":"siding-with-ukraines-far-right-us-sabotaged-zelenskys-peace-mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/04\/siding-with-ukraines-far-right-us-sabotaged-zelenskys-peace-mandate\/","title":{"rendered":"Siding with Ukraine\u2019s Far-Right, US Sabotaged Zelensky\u2019s Peace Mandate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2019, Zelensky was elected on an overwhelming mandate to make peace with Russia. As Stephen F. Cohen warned that year, the US chose to side with Ukraine’s far-right and fuel war.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Zelensky in his May 2019 inaugural address. (President.gov.ua)<\/p><\/div>\n

10 Apr 2022 – <\/em>On a warm October day in 2019, the eminent Russia studies professor Stephen F. Cohen and I sat down in Manhattan for what would be\u00a0our last in-person interview<\/a>\u00a0(Cohen\u00a0passed away in September 2020 at the age of 81<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The House was gearing up to impeach Donald Trump for freezing weapons shipments to Ukraine while pressuring its government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Beltway media was consumed with frenzy of a presidency in peril. But Professor Cohen, one of the leading Russia scholars in the United States, was concerned with what the impeachment spectacle in Washington meant for the long-running war between the US-backed Ukrainian government and Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas.<\/p>\n

At that point, Ukraine\u2019s Volodymyr Zelensky was just months into an upstart presidency that he had won on a pledge to end the Donbas conflict. Instead of supporting the Ukrainian leader\u2019s peace mandate, Democrats in Congress were impeaching Trump for briefly impeding the flow of weapons that fueled the fight. As his Democratic allies now like to forget, President Obama\u00a0refused to send<\/a>\u00a0these same weapons out of fear of\u00a0prolonging the war<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0arming Nazis<\/a>. By abandoning Obama\u2019s policy, the Democrats, Cohen warned, threaten to sabotage peace and strengthen Ukraine\u2019s far-right.<\/p>\n

\u201cZelensky ran as a peace candidate,\u201d Cohen explained. \u201cHe won an enormous mandate to make peace. So, that means he has to negotiate with Vladimir Putin.\u201d But there was a major obstacle. Ukrainian fascists \u201chave said that they will remove and kill Zelensky if he continues along this line of negotiating with Putin\u2026 His life is being threatened literally by a quasi-fascist movement in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peace could only come, Cohen stressed, on one condition. \u201c[Zelensky] can\u2019t go forward with full peace negotiations with Russia, with Putin, unless America has his back,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe that won\u2019t be enough, but unless the White House encourages this diplomacy, Zelensky has no chance of negotiating an end to the war. So the stakes are enormously high.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In October 2019, Stephen F. Cohen (RIP) implored DC to support Zelensky's peace mandate.<\/p>\n

"His life is being threatened by a quasi-fascist movement," Cohen said. "He can\u2019t go forward with full peace negotiations unless America has his back." Siding with fascists, DC chose war. pic.twitter.com\/hXkq270Shs<\/a><\/p>\n

— Aaron Mat\u00e9 (@aaronjmate) April 10, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n