Slowly but surely, the Mainstream Media is coming to terms with the fact that the support for the Ukrainian regime has diminished considerably in many countries – including the US.
The theme became unavoidable once Poland declared that it will no longer give weapons, ammunition and equipments to Kiev.
The same Poland who has supplied hundreds tanks, 14 Mig-29 fighter jets, served as a major transit hub for weapons from other nations, and provided its military bases for training Ukrainian servicemen.
It was indeed a shocking development.
Warsaw has also spent billions of Euros on other forms of aid, from the construction of houses for refugees to medical supplies and power generators.
Finally, Warsaw now has also said it also will not extend support for Ukrainian refugees – including work permits, free schooling, access to healthcare and other benefits.
After that, all MSM started to evaluate the new reality.
Politico reported:
“Russian President Vladimir Putin has made little secret of his plan to keep up the pressure on Ukraine until Western resolve breaks. More than 500 days into his war of aggression, he now has reason to believe things are working out the way he hoped, even if events are not playing out how he might have imagined.”
Besides Poland, nations like Estonia, Slovakia and others have been among Kiev’s most reliable allies, sending weapons and welcoming millions of Ukrainian refugees.
They also had the vital role of Ukraine’s loudest advocates in the West, always pushing for a tough line against Moscow.
“But as the leaders of some of these ride-or-die allies face reelection battles or other domestic challenges, and governments get nervous about the impact of Ukraine one day joining the European Union, that support is starting to waver.”
The dispute between Kyiv and Warsaw over grain shipments is embedded in the upcoming electoral cycle. Warsaw claims Ukraine’s cheap grain undercuts production from Polish farmers.
“’Ukraine realizes that in the last months, they’re not bordering Poland, they’re bordering Polish elections’, said Ivan Krastev, chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. So for now, ‘the votes of a hundred thousand Polish farmers are more important for the government than what is going to be the cost for Ukraine. And we’re going to see this happening in many places’, he added.”
PM Morawiecki faces Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and former president of the European Council.
The prime minister is seen as courting supporters of the rightwing Confederation Party, which opposes aid for Ukraine.
But it’s not just Poland that is drifting apart. Estonia’s liberal prime minister, Kaja Kallas took a hit over a scandal involving her husband, who was revealed to own a stake in a company that kept doing business in Russia even as his wife was advocating for ending all trade with Moscow.
In Slovakia, among Europe’s biggest backers of Ukraine, elections on September 30 could turn it overnight away from Ukraine support.
“’If you have a society where only 40 percent support arms delivery to Ukraine and your government offers support almost at the level of the Baltics, that creates a backlash’, said Milan Nič, a fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.”
Robert Fico, the country’s populist former prime minister, is campaigning on a pro-Russian, anti-American platform and is on course to win the election.
And then, there’s America, of course.
Even CNN had to report that ‘the blue-and-gold flag draped hero worship of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s last Washington trip, which stirred comparisons to Winston Churchill’s wartime stand against Nazism, was a distant memory’.
The impact of a brutal war left Zelensky ‘looking exhausted and unsmiling’.
“And in public appearances, Zelensky’s patience sometimes frayed – especially when berating the United Nations for failing to protect its members from aggression. In a US capital that has undergone an ideological shift since he was last here just before Christmas 2022, it now takes more than quoting President Franklin Roosevelt and drawing allusions to 9/11, to woo lawmakers.
There’s also a question of whether Zelensky’s relentless efforts to shame the world into action might be reaching the point of diminishing returns. The pugnacious president might think so too judging by his multiple and poignant expressions of gratitude for previous help as polls show more Americans are skeptical of aid to Ukraine. He may need to develop new political skills to adapt to a vicious phase in American politics when Ukraine is being dragged into an impeachment saga for the second time and is a central general election issue.
‘Mr. President, the brave people in Ukraine, and that’s not hyperbole, the people of Ukraine have shown an enormous bravery, enormous bravery’, Biden told Zelensky in the Oval Office. ‘Together with our partners and allies, the American people are determined to see to all we can to ensure the world stands with you’.”
Zelensky was cautious to profusely thank Biden for America’s support, as Biden unveiled yet another US aid package for Ukraine worth $325 million.
If Zelensky came to America this week hoping for a reprise of the cheering adulation and pledges of massive military support that he received during his last visit, he must have been very disappointed.
Slate reported:
“On his first stop, at the United Nations, he gave an impassioned speech before the General Assembly—but more than a third of the hall’s seats were empty, the heads of state from four of the Security Council’s five permanent members were no-shows, and his meeting with the council dramatized that body’s inability to help him stave off Russia’s aggression.
Then came a trip to Capitol Hill, in which the beleaguered House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, not only declined Zelensky’s request to address a joint session of Congress but barred him from the chamber’s private meeting room, directing the few House Republicans who wanted to greet him to do so at the National Archives, nearly a mile away. (More than half the Senators—including several Republicans—attended a briefing by Kiev’s wartime leader on the other side of the Capitol.)”
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