Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Experiencing Political Friction

Ukrainian opposition is increasingly critical of the Zelensky administration

A number of MPs are denouncing abusive control on their travel abroad, subject to prior authorization, and are accusing the authorities of trying to stifle their voice.
By Thomas d’Istria (Kyiv, correspondent)Published yesterday at 4:15 pm (Paris)

Misuse of martial law: In power from 2014 to 2019 and now a member of parliament, Poroshenko even went so far as to send a letter, at the end of February, to the European commissioner for neighborhood and enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi, to contest the "misuse" of martial law and war with the aim, in his view, to "cleanse the political field from opposition and isolate it from international communication."

The former head of state, who maintains notoriously hostile relations with his successor, has himself not been allowed to leave the country on at least two occasions. The first time was in December 2023, when he was planning to travel to Poland and the United States. To justify the ban, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) cited the risk of "instrumentalization by the Russians" of a supposed meeting between Poroshenko and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been highly critical of Kyiv since the start of the war. . .

TODAY'S WORLDVIEW

How the war in Ukraine has split the Czechs and Slovaks

Columnist

March 20, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. EDT

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, is welcomed by Czech Republic's prime minister, Petr Fiala, in Prague on Feb. 27. (David W Cerny/Reuters)

The ongoing war in Ukraine is splitting the Czechs and Slovaks all over again — or at least their governments.

Over the past month, the marked differences between a staunchly pro-Kyiv government in Prague and Slovakia’s Russia-friendly Prime Minister Robert Fico have come to the fore.

On one hand, the Czechs have pioneered a plan to surge desperately needed artillery shells to Ukraine’s front lines, sourcing munitions from the arsenals of countries around the world.
On the other, Fico, a populist and four-term prime minister who returned to power at the end of last year after a spell in opposition, has suspended military assistance to Ukraine after campaigning to not send “another bullet” to Kyiv.
He has repeatedly called for the war to end with significant Ukrainian concessions to Russia.

The gulf between the two governments grew this month, after Prague suspended a tradition of informal joint cabinet meetings with Bratislava in the wake of a meeting between the Slovak foreign minister and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Fico’s self-styled “sovereign” foreign policy is similar to the position struck out by his ally in Hungary, illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Fico has not played the same obstinate role as Orban on the European Union level but has nevertheless bucked the trend among Ukraine’s European neighbors in wholeheartedly backing its defense.

Since the end of the Cold War and the subsequent bifurcation of Czechoslovakia, the two countries that emerged maintained warm brotherly ties, even when ruling governments in Prague and Bratislava were of differing political stripes.

But disagreements over how or how not to support Ukraine have brought about an unprecedented rupture.
“Even at its worst in the past, the relationship was one of mutual indifference but never one of open rhetorical confrontation,” Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told me.

Fico responded to Fiala’s decision to suspend those intergovernmental consultations between the two countries’ cabinets by accusing Fiala’s government of jeopardizing ties with their historic brethren and having “an interest in supporting the war” in Ukraine.

Fiala then pointedly hosted Michal Simecka, the Slovak opposition leader, in Prague and hailed their shared views on foreign policy.

“We know who is the aggressor and who is the victim, and we also know who needs to be helped,” Fiala said in a reference to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Fico has been outspoken in his challenges to Western orthodoxy, offering the perspective of a supposed pragmatist who wants peace and recognizes Ukraine will not be able to recover much of the territory it has lost in the south and southeast of the country.

He also casts overt support for Ukraine as a bid to undermine Russia and has mocked the idea of Ukrainian sovereignty, suggesting Kyiv is entirely beholden to the United States.

“I am not convinced of the sincerity of the West to achieve peace in Ukraine,” Fico said on Facebook this month.
“And I will repeat again that the western strategy of using the war in Ukraine to weaken Russia economically, militarily and politically is not working.”

The tensions on show may be less about divisions between the two countries than those within them.

Fiala’s predecessor, Andrej Babis, is similarly aligned with Fico’s camp, a populist wary of E.U. diktat and more friendly to Moscow.
In both countries, a critical mass — though not the majority — of the electorate is skeptical of the West and open to the Russian perspective of the war.

Le Monde

16 hours ago

Ukraine shocked by US delay to pass $60 billion aid package

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Ukraine’s Zelensky and Hungary’s Orban reflect a divided Washington

By Ishaan Tharoor

Ishaan Tharoor is a foreign affairs columnist at The Washington Post, where he authors the Today's WorldView newsletter and column. In 2021, he won the Arthur Ross Media Award in Commentary from the American Academy of Diplomacy. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York. Twitter

December 12, 2023 at 3:44 p.m. EST

The Washington Post

12 hours ago

Deadlock on U.S. aid hangs over talks to secure support for Ukraine

". . .They may be geographic neighbors, but Zelensky and Orban find themselves on opposite sides of one of the largest points of friction roiling transatlantic politics: the extent to which the West should keep funding Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, and integrate Kyiv into the broader European project. . .

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of his country, Zelensky has emerged as a lion of the geopolitical West, casting Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression as a fight for the defense of liberal democracies everywhere. But his entreaties for continued support from the United States and its European partners — both in terms of billions of dollars in tangible military aid as well as binding political commitments involving accession into blocs such as the European Union and NATO — are increasingly finding a less enthusiastic audience in Western capitals. . .

Orban has balked at allowing the transit of arms to Kyiv and scoffed at fast-tracking Ukrainian membership in the European Union.

“Hungary is a neighbor of Ukraine … we know exactly what is happening,” Orban told French publication Le Point last week.
“Ukraine is known to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
It’s a joke!”

Congress has so far allocated a mammoth $111 billion for Ukraine, and the White House is seeking some $61 billion more.

The current mood in Washington pits establishment Republicans against Trumpist hard-liners, who resent directing American taxpayer money to Ukraine (even though much of the funding is lining the pockets of U.S. arms companies).

National Security

Deadlock on U.S. aid hangs over talks to secure support for Ukraine