“What goes around comes around” often refers to geopolitical events linked to similar occurrences in history.
We hear repeated comparisons of Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s brutal tactics in attacking Ukraine with those of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, and when Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses various parliaments and presidents around the world by video link, his bravery and resolve are compared to Winston Churchill.
More accurately, President Zelenskyy’s communication skills and lifestyle would be favourably compared to those of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
To find out more of the Ukrainian President, a November 2021 report from the Wilson Center (a U.S. think tank) is accessible online. The title really says it all : ‘Just Like All The Others: The End Of The Zelenskyy Alternative?’, and details his time in office with an approval rate of only 23 per cent.
However, since the assault by Russia began a month ago, his leadership and communication skills have become apparent as his approval ratings soared.
Somehow that reminds me of Reagan’s successor George H. W. Bush whose approval rating was 90 per cent in 1991, after he successfully drove Iraq’s army out of Kuwait in what was known as Desert Storm.
However, he was defeated in 1992’s election by a Democrat called Bill Clinton who was reviled in some media as a draft-dodging, dope-smoking womanizer.
Nobody knows how this terrible aggression in Ukraine will end, but assuming President Zelenskyy is still around, he may yet be compared to Winston Churchill.
It was at the end of the Second World War in 1945 that Churchill was rejected by the British electorate, despite all his achievements to defeat Nazi Germany and the Axis Alliance.
What happens to President Zelenskyy depends on how negotiations work out to end this war.
A video is doing the rounds purporting to be him and his wife singing ‘Endless Love’, but it turns out to be a look-alike couple of actors and a complete fake. Now would be a good time for him and Mrs. Zelenskyy to hope Big Bad Vlad in Moscow is listening as they try an imitation of John Lennon and Yoko Ono singing : ‘Give Peace A Chance’.
Bernie Smith
Parksville