Is Zelensky a Western puppet?
People outside Ukraine usually did not know much about the country before the 2022 Russian invasion. And only after Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine started making headlines. And since most of the NATO countries and democracies around the world started helping Ukraine, Zelensky looked as a very pro-Western politician. So pro-Western that someone goes so far as to call him a Western puppet. But this is only because rarely who cared about Zelensky before the 2022 in the world.
The simplified narrative about Ukraine is like this: there is a pro-Western part of Ukraine and pro-Russian part of Ukraine and all people, presidents and politicians in Ukraine are divided into the two camps — pro-Western and pro-Russian. This is often accompanied by the picture similar to this (as if there was some magic wall between the two colors):
According to this simplified narrative, Yanukovich was a pro-Russian president, there was a coup against him in 2014, therefore the president who came after him was pro-Western. And West indeed helps Zelensky, so all puzzles fit together: Zelensky is a pro-Western president.
But is he? Actually the whole talk about pro-Russian vs pro-Western politics in Ukraine is a very simplified one, but that’s a topic for another article. Now let’s concentrate on Zelensky.
It’s true that Yanukovich was more pro-Russian than the opposition. However there was yet another president between Yanukovich and Zelensky. And it even wasn’t Yarosh — the head of a so feared right-wing party “Right Sector” whom Russians loved calling Nazi until they could speak of “Azov”. It was Poroshenko who became president in 2014. He indeed had a very pro-Western politics, but this could be explained by the war started by Russia, because otherwise he was not at all that pro-Western before (he was one of the founders of a “Party of Regions”, that Yanukovich — yes, that same pro-Russian president — was later a head of).
Now about Zelensky. He was a Russian speaking TV-star who had nothing to do with politics before the elections. Zelensky opposed Poroshenko during 2019 campaign and he accused Poroshenko in not willing to end the war. Zelensky was trying to bring peace, claimed that he wanted to come to agreement with Putin, and he was more supported by eastern and southern Ukraine, which is usually associated with pro-Russian candidates. And Zelensky won the election with an overwhelming majority of votes. And please note, that he won the elections against Poroshenko while Poroshenko was still in power, which is a good indicator that those elections were not rigged. Zelensky definitely was more pro-Russian than Poroshenko. But he was not as pro-Russian as to happily give away Ukrainian lands to Russia. None of the Ukrainian presidents were that pro-Russian (right, even Yanukovich would not agree to that).
During Zelensky’s rule, there were several cease-fire attempts, some of them quite successful. War in Donbas almost stopped. But after the big invasion started Zelensky asked the West for help. Because — well, who else could he realistically ask if it was Russia who invaded? Imagine a parallel universe where it was Poland invading Ukraine in 2014 and then the whole NATO in 2022, I guess he would ask Russia for help. Yes, he did become much more pro-western in 2022. That’s because Russia invaded us and West helps us. Becoming pro-Western is just common sense.
Sometimes you may hear that he promised his pro-Russian voters one thing and then he changed sides. That’s not true either. While he seemed more pro-Russian than Poroshenko, he was still pro-Ukrainian, he just visioned Ukraine differently. And the NATO admission was in this vision from the very beginning[1]. He did not hide this.
So while Zelensky is currently pro-Western, that’s a very logical consequences of Russian actions, he was not that pro-Western before, he was even seen as pro-Russian and he definitely did not come into power right after the 2014 revolution.
[1] Zelensky presidential program (in Ukrainian) https://program.ze2019.com/