17/08/2026
From a Middle Eastern man who has watched countries destroyed while great powers played chess with other people’s lives, I look at what happened to Ukraine and I cannot understand how you still speak as if this disaster is some kind of heroic political achievement.
President Zelensky, you were elected to protect a country, not to turn it into the battlefield between Russia and the West. That is the point you seem to have forgotten.
You behaved as though Western applause was the same thing as strategic security. It was not. You behaved as though speeches in European parliaments, weapons shipments, sanctions and promises could somehow erase the fact that Russia is your neighbor. They could not.
Geography does not care about applause.
Russia was there before you became president, and Russia will still be there after you are gone.
You gambled on the idea that the West could weaken Russia so severely that Ukraine would somehow emerge victorious and permanently secure. But what exactly was the endgame? Did you genuinely believe NATO countries were going to destroy Russia? Did you believe the United States and Europe would risk their own survival indefinitely for Ukraine? Did you think a nuclear power of Russia’s size could simply be removed from the strategic map?
That was fantasy.
And your country paid for that fantasy.
Cities were destroyed. Families were divided. Millions were displaced. Men died. Children lost their childhoods. Businesses disappeared. Infrastructure was ruined. An entire generation will carry the scars.
And still the Western politicians who encouraged you can sleep in safe capitals thousands of kilometers away.
They can change their policy tomorrow. They can negotiate tomorrow. They can suddenly decide that “peace is now necessary.” They can shake hands with the same Russian officials they spent years condemning.
And then what?
Will they bring the dead back? Will they return destroyed homes? Will they restore the years Ukrainians lost? Will they compensate every family?
Of course not.
Ukraine will pay.
You will eventually leave office. Western leaders will eventually leave office. But ordinary Ukrainians will remain trapped inside the consequences of decisions made by politicians who may never personally experience even one percent of the suffering.
People from the Middle East know this story very well.
We have heard the speeches. We have seen foreign flags arrive. We have heard promises of democracy, security, freedom and a better future. Then priorities change. Governments change. Interests change. And suddenly the same powers that encouraged confrontation begin talking about compromise.
That is why your political judgment deserves to be questioned so harshly.
You came from acting, and at times it has seemed as though politics continued to be treated like a stage: dramatic speeches, symbolism, cameras, standing ovations and carefully constructed images of defiance.
But war is not theater.
There is no second take.
Dead people do not return when the scene ends.
Destroyed cities are not movie sets.
A president cannot measure success by applause abroad while his own country is bleeding.
Russia bears responsibility for invading Ukraine. That is clear. But your responsibility was to understand what Ukraine could realistically survive and whether every possible diplomatic and strategic alternative had truly been exhausted before the country became the frontline of a confrontation between much larger powers.
A leader does not merely ask who is morally right.
A leader asks what his country can survive.
That is the difference between rhetoric and statecraft.
You had to understand that Ukraine sits between Russia and the Western alliance. That reality demanded extraordinary caution, balance and cold strategic calculation.
Instead, Ukraine became increasingly dependent on countries that never carried the same risk.
The United States is protected by oceans.
Western Europe is protected by NATO.
Ukraine was the battlefield.
That should have told you everything.
And here is the question many people will refuse even to ask:
What if neutrality, strategic accommodation or a deeply negotiated relationship with Russia could have left Ukrainians safer, richer and alive?
What if Ukraine had remained a bridge between East and West instead of becoming the trench line between them?
What if economic integration with Russia and the wider Eurasian market had been preferable to devastation?
Russia today maintains a major strategic and economic relationship with China, one of the most important manufacturing, commercial and technological powers in the world. Whatever anyone thinks politically about Moscow or Beijing, that Eurasian economic reality is not disappearing.
So why was Ukraine’s future presented as though there were only two choices: complete alignment with the West or political failure?
Why was coexistence treated as betrayal?
Why was realism treated as cowardice?
Why did you apparently believe that living beside Russia meant Russia had to be defeated rather than managed?
You cannot erase your neighbor.
You cannot sanction geography.
You cannot bomb geography.
You cannot give a speech and make geography disappear.
Russia will remain beside Ukraine for generations.
And this is the tragedy: after all the blood, destruction and heroic slogans, Ukraine may still eventually have to sit down and negotiate with Russia.
If that happens, history will ask a devastating question:
Why was the same negotiation impossible before so much was destroyed?
Why did it require ruined cities and shattered families first?
Why did Ukrainians have to pay such a price before diplomacy became acceptable again?
And do not tell people that sacrifice alone proves wisdom.
A leader can be courageous and still make catastrophic strategic mistakes.
History is full of brave leaders who ruined their countries.
The real measure of leadership is not whether you are willing to fight.
It is whether you understand when fighting serves your country and when your country is being consumed by a struggle that serves larger powers.
The West will never destroy itself in order to destroy Russia.
It will never erase Russia.
It will never sacrifice its own capitals for Kyiv.
Eventually Western governments will do what all governments do: protect their own interests first.
You should have understood that from day one.
So who pays?
Not the politicians giving speeches in Brussels.
Not the advisers in Washington.
Not the commentators on television.
Not the strategists sitting thousands of kilometers away.
Ukraine pays.
And that is why your legacy will not be determined by how many standing ovations you received.
It will be determined by whether Ukraine is safer, stronger, richer and more secure when your political career ends than when it began.
If the answer is no, then all the speeches in the world will not save your reputation.
From where I stand, you did not simply miscalculate Russia.
You miscalculated the West.
You miscalculated geography.
And most tragically, you miscalculated how much suffering your own people could be forced to endure for a geopolitical strategy whose final outcome was never entirely in Ukraine’s hands.
That is not heroic leadership.
That is a devastating failure of judgment.
