Zelensky's popularity has reached new low

     

Ukrainian president Zelensky has come under unprecedented criticism from Ukrainians since the beginning of the war after an interview with The Washington Post, in which he said he knew about the looming war as early as last fall, but did not tell his countrymen. Some see this as the first real crisis in his team's communications strategy.

      

Critics say that if he had warned his people, many people would have organized their lives differently and thousands would have been saved. Criticisms are mainly on social networks, but they are from politicians and ordinary Ukrainians, as well as popular personalities and scientists. Some even accuse him of being partially responsible for the atrocities that followed, or even treason.

       

Some understand his words in the interview as prioritizing the state of the economy over the survival of the people. Others believe that he questioned the intelligence of Ukrainians and that many of them would accept $7 billion a month in losses as the price for saving so many lives of women, children and the elderly lost in areas suddenly under Russian occupation.

      

"He didn't want to prepare the country for war because he was afraid that he would lose power," writes journalist Bogdan Butkevych on Facebook. “To be honest, my hair stood on end when I read what he said about the evacuation... How is it possible for a person on whose conscience lies Mariupol, Bucha and Kherson, to say that an evacuation would have created chaos in the country?"

      

There are those who defend the president and point out that Ukrainians have had access to media reports for months about American warnings that war is imminent and could begin at any moment.

     

"Anyone who didn't pack a backpack after the reports of what American intelligence said has no right to claim that they weren't warned," says Valerii Pekar.

     

"We all knew and understood that war was coming. We just didn't want to believe it, because it was too terrible to be true," writes Olena Gnes, founder of the "What is Ukraine" project. “No statement by Zelensky would have changed anything significantly.”

      

But Ukrainians also ask quite reasonable questions, such as why blood banks were not prepared or why defensive fences were not erected along the northern border to stop an assault on Kyiv. Others say they have questions but will wait to ask them until after the war is over.