### Recommended Edits for Accuracy

1. Oligarchs and Presidents: Clarify that not all post-Kuchma presidents were billionaires (e.g., Yushchenko).
2. Banned Parties: Specify that only pro-Russian parties were restricted for national security reasons, not all opposition.
3. Religion: Correct the “1,000-year-old religion” claim; clarify the Moscow Patriarchate’s historical ties.
4. Negotiations: Note that Zelenskyy’s decree is reversible and tied to wartime conditions.
5. Elections: Explain that martial law legally suspends elections, per Ukraine’s constitution.
6. Polls: Provide context for survey data (e.g., timing, methodology).
7. Lira’s Case: Acknowledge charges related to justifying invasion, not just “exposing information.”
8. Historical Context: Replace “artificially created” with recognition of Ukraine’s sovereign statehood.

President Donald Trump recently tweeted on X that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has continually refused to negotiate an end to the conflict with Russia calling him a “dictator without elections.”

Is this true or is Zelenskyy really the heroic Churchillian figure the legacy media makes him out to be?

Zelenskyy came to office in 2019 replacing the corrupt and unpopular Petro Poroshenko. The diminutive former comedian promised to end the civil war in Donbas, which started in 2014 after the Euromaidan color revolution that overthrew Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovitch. He won with a very high percentage of the votes against his opponent in the second round, Poroshenko. Zelenskyy is a Russian speaking Jew, who was supported heavily by ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the east who wanted to end the war. Poroshenko was then indicted for corruption.

At first, many people were stunned by his “surprise” success as someone who never held office before. Many wondered if this could herald the reform of Ukraine’s rampant corruption.

To provide some context, this resource rich nation was often rated near the bottom of Europe in terms of poverty and corruption. Ukraine’s four presidents after Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005) have either been billionaire oligarchs —Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019) — were sponsored by oligarchs who helped them win the election Viktor Yanukovych and Zelenskyy — or helped enrich corrupt oligarchs after promising reform — Viktor Yushchenko.

During [Yushchenko’s] tenure, local officials and their cronies made new fortunes by doling out communal land in Kyiv, Crimea and Lviv. To the chagrin of his civil society allies, the new president seemed to get along well with Kuchma-era oligarchs. Far from facing jail terms, their business empires expanded, and so did their influence. In 2006, Yushchenko bestowed the state award “For merit” on four of Ukraine’s richest and most powerful: billionaires Rinat Akhmetov and Igor Kolomoisky, and multimillionaires Serhiy Taruta and Hryhoriy Surkis. Two years later, Yushchenko visited the Japanese garden of art-lover Viktor Pinchuk, an oligarch whose business empire had mushroomed under the rule of his father-in-law Kuchma. The visit was widely interpreted as a signal that oligarchs had nothing to fear from his presidency.

Corruption has also plagued prime ministers and other Ukrainian officials, including billionaire oligarch, Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister under Yushchenko.

US President Joe Biden came under scrutiny for his dealings with Ukraine’s largest gas company. Allegations against Biden emerged due to the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor F. Yanukovych before he was forced into exile. According to Ukrainian authorities Zlochevsky was suspected of theft of government funds on an especially large scale.

Zelensky the Showman

Zelenskyy’s oligarch is Igor Kolomoisky. He helped him found a media empire and his sitcom called Servant of the People, which is about a high school teacher whose students post a video of him ranting about the corruption in the country that goes viral and then becomes president and fights corruption. You can watch it on Netflix in English. They then founded the Servant of the People party and he was sort of a novelty candidate like Trump at first but then surprisingly won the election. Just like in the TV show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtG0ZenBmx4

When Zelenskyy won the election, he turned on Kolomoisky and had him indicted for corruption.

Then he banned any suspected pro-Russian opposition parties leaving only the Ukrainian nationalist parties in power. Then he banned all opposition media, then he strengthened the ban on Russian language and culture, then he banned a 1,000-year-old Ukrainian Orthodox Church claiming that the Orthodox priests were spies for Russia due to its ties to the Moscow Patriarchy. Then he issued a decree making it illegal for him to negotiate the end of the war with Putin for as long as he is in power. The decree is reversible at any time, but when challenged resorts to evasion calling this impossible.

Not ending martial law and calling for elections is a way for Zelensky to stay in office. His most recent polls show him losing to General Valeriy Zaluzhny. In four out of five polls 2025 polls, Zelenskyy is trailing Zaluzhny significantly with less than 25%. Zaluzhny was relieved from being Commander of the Ukrainian armed forces because he criticized Zelenskyy saying that the war has become a stalemate at best and Ukraine should negotiate with Russia. Zaluzhny was then blamed for the Nordstream pipeline sabotage, and yet promoted to be ambassador to England. Now more than 52% of Ukrainians want to end the war and negotiate with Russia, and only 32% want to continue. Of course, the sample excludes the Russian population in the five oblasts already acceded to Russia. Recruiters who took bribes to allow men to keep out of the military were fired and indicted for corruption. Now Zelenskyy has recruiters who literally pull people out of their cars and send them to the front lines with little training to die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZ2HBMzfqY

Throughout the first two years of the war American journalist and successful novelist, Gonzalo Lira, exposed much of this information to Americans on social media. He was strangely allowed to do this for well over two years. He was occasionally questions by Ukraine’s SBU, and was later arrested for “justifying the Russian invasion.” His trial was delayed, but then he was released. Then SBU agents caught him at the border of Hungary trying to leave the country. Then they put him back in jail without a trial date. He was beaten, contracted pneumonia and he died in prison. The Biden administration did nothing to try to extradite him.

_If that’s not a dictator, I don’t know what it is. _

If Zelenskyy wanted to, he could open an election and put a slate of candidates on a ballot. Then he could ask the Rada to negotiate a ceasefire with Russia while they hold elections for a few days. I’m pretty sure that the Russians would gladly do that in order to get Zelenskyy out of the way so they can negotiate with someone that has common sense.

But that’s not likely to happen. The same powers that be, the same oligarchs that control Zelenskyy, also control the key leaders in the Rada too.

People who defend Zelenskyy as a hero can show a little piece of the picture, but when we look at his whole story from beginning to an end he’s one in a line of corrupt presidents, who might be indicted himself when he leaves office.

Ukraine is not a free democratic nation. It was originally a Socialist Republic of the former Soviet Union that was created by its communist leader out of pieces of other nations. They took parts of Russia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland and added it to a heartland populated with Ukrainians. In 1991, they declared themselves on nation after the Soviet Union dissolved. It’s sovereignty was recognized internationally. But from the beginning, Ukraine has been ruled by a corrupt oligarchy.

Zelenskyy is not the hero that the Western media and many Western politicians make him out to be. He is an actor. He’s a clown dancing on the end of marionette strings.

If you’re honest and brave enough to want to know the truth and the fact that you’ve been lied to, look at the following bio on Ihor Kolomoyskyi. He was the money behind Zelenskyy’s rise to power. It is who Zelenskyy is behind the mask. But now Kolomoyky has been in prison for many months out of sight without a speedy trial. Nobody in the media will cover this. If the pattern holds, Zelenskyy himself might soon find himself out of power facing corruption charges.