“Putin’s coalition now rules Ukraine,” by Vitaliy Portnikov, Euromaidan Press, March 7:
Even before the beginning of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s term, I assumed that the Kremlin was preparing a “Moldavian scenario” for our country, when at first – under the pretext of fighting oligarchy and corruption – a coalition of pro-Western and pro-Russian forces is created, and then pro-Western forces are expelled from it and Vladimir Putin’s supporters begin to rule alone. And they would rule with the support of the very same unprincipled corrupt government officials with whom they supposedly recently fought.
…The scenario was launched with the help of simple populist slogans that served to lure to vote for Zelenskyy and his party’s parliamentary candidates not only outright supporters of Ukraine’s surrender and rapprochement with Moscow, not only the indifferent and the ignorant, but also an unsophisticated fraction of Ukrainian patriots.