‘Zelensky Nationalism Has Reached its Sell-By Date’, US Thinker Says After Nuclear Strike Comments

Eight months into Russia’s special operation in Ukraine and NATO is still supporting Kiev, even when it carries out terrorist attacks against Russian infrastructure, assassinates Russian journalists, and demands a nuclear attack on Russia. For some Americans, it’s no longer clear why Washington is funneling Ukraine tens of billions in weapons.

Rod Dreher, a senior editor of The American Conservative, a US political magazine, argued in a recent blog post that “Zelensky maximalism has reached its sell-by date.”

While Dreher concedes that for a time, the Ukrainian president was politically useful for the West, that time has come to an end with the accession of four formerly Ukrainian provinces into the Russian Federation on the one hand, and Zelensky’s calls for preemptive nuclear strikes against Russia on the other hand.

“Look, I understand why Volodymyr Zelensky is doing what he's doing,” Dreher wrote. “It is in his best interest to draw the US and Europe into maximally committing to Ukraine's defense. But it is emphatically not in our best interest - especially as we may be barreling towards Armageddon.”

However, he said that many Americans project onto Zelensky - as they have a habit of doing in other countries - the American values that they want to see. When it comes to Zelensky, that includes believing he is a political liberal who is defending democracy, is pro-LGBTQ rights, and for US interests in general.

In reality, Zelensky is a hardcore nationalist who has banned opposition parties and media, united with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and “is trying to drag the US into a war that is moving closer to becoming nuclear.”

Zelensky “has powerful voices in the US who valorize him and the Ukrainian cause beyond what the record, and reality, can support,” Hagle writes. “The man loves his country, and that is an admirable thing. But we Americans who love our country should not let that Ukrainian patriot lead us by the nose to the brink of nuclear war.”

Russia launched its special operation in February 2022 after months of failed negotiations over its security red lines, which NATO considered to be “non-starters.” Moscow has demanded Ukraine declare itself a neutral state and forswear joining NATO, and that it end its support for neo-Nazi groups and the persecution of Russophone Ukrainians.

Last month, two majority-Russian-speaking regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson declared independence from Ukraine and voted to join the Russian Federation, as did two independent republics in the Donbass region (the Lugansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic) whose independence Moscow recognized in February.