by BINOY KAMPMARK
The transformation of Ukraine into untarnished, saintly victim, symbol of democracy and civil society savaged by brutish Russia, has been nothing less than remarkable. The endemic corruption of a state captured by oligarchic tendencies and its own breed of kleptocrats has somehow gone by the wayside, only interrupted by the occasional symbolic purge by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Lo, before us, the Athenian project writ large in eastern Europe, deserving of protection.
Each arms shipment is made and justified on the basis of Ukraine’s civilizational imperative, proclaimed as not merely European but global. It is a spectacular refit verging on pantomime. But occasionally, a few cracks in the show appear. For one, Zelensky’s desperate effort to make his impoverished and war ravaged country appealing to investors, and who that message is being sold to, is telling.
In his January 23 address to the National Association of State Chambers, the Ukrainian President rubs and massages the US ego with stretchy analogies. He links the creation of a business with defending Ukraine. It seems that fighting and dying in the Ukraine War “is like starting your own business and working day from morning till night, every day, so that one day you can see how your dream is becoming true – when you finally have your own operating business.” (Someone really ought to furnish him with Arthur Miller’s sober corrective Death of a Salesman.)
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