It’s clear that NATO is preparing to jettison Zelensky and blame the Russians for his “assassination”; the neoclown media is openly discussing how Zelensky will be replaced as the head of the Kiev puppet regime in an article that reads as if it was written by Henry II.
“Will no one rid of us this troublesome beggar?”
Given the stakes, and the risk, it is little wonder Ukrainian officials tend to brush off requests to discuss what would happen were Russia to succeed — or they decline to go on the record, worrying the topic appears far too macabre.
And yet, despite the reluctance to publicly engage with the question, there is a plan in place, according to interviews with Ukrainian officials and lawmakers as well as analysts. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as much: “The Ukrainians have plans in place — that I’m not going to talk about or get into any details on — to make sure that there is what we would call ‘continuity of government’ one way or another,” he told CBS news last year.
Ukraine’s Parliament chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk | STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
Formally, under the constitution, the line of succession is clear. “When the president is unable to fulfill his duties, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [the Ukrainian parliament] takes over his responsibilities,” said Mykola Knyazhytsky, an opposition lawmaker from the western city of Lviv. “Therefore, there would be no power vacuum.”The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada — Ruslan Stefanchuk, a member of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party — doesn’t have an especially high trust rating in opinion polls. It is around 40 percent, less than half of Zelenskyy’s. And he’s not popular with opposition lawmakers.
“But I don’t think it matters,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “There’s a strong leadership team and I think we would see collective government,” he added.
The governing council would most likely consist of Stefanchuk as the figurehead, along with Andrii Yermak, the former movie producer and lawyer who’s the head of the office of the president, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. Valery Zaluzhny would remain as the country’s top general.
Karatnycky said he would hope to see a role for TV personality Serhiy Prytula, who now runs major charitable initiatives and has a sky-high public trust rating.
Ukraine’s plan if Russia assassinates Zelenskyy, POLITICO, 1 August 2023
Zelensky has nothing to fear from Russia. He’s one of the Russian military’s greatest assets, as he successfully convinced NATO to throw away their donated forces in a manner that has done about as little damage to Russia as possible; Faramir’s cavalry charge against the fortified position of Mordor’s archers in the Jackson film was equally well-conceived and did just about as much harm to the defenders.
Simplicius has worked out that Ukraine may be already down to as little as only 100 tanks remaining to its entire armed forces.
The offensive is now about 2 months old and was of a highly elevated intensity. That means it’s not out of the realm of possibility that their losses were double the rate at 150-200 per month, which would put us at 400 after 2 months. Finally, given that we had come to the ~500 number earlier, subtracting the new ~400 losses would mean that the AFU would be at an absolutely dire state of only 100 remaining tanks. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and say perhaps it’s a bit higher at 200-300 left, this is much less than it sounds given that it represents as little as two weeks’ worth of losses in current high intensity combat levels. If my numbers are even remotely close then that is disastrous. It would mean the AFU is on the verge of collapse.
Which, of course, is why the more hawkish neoclowns have already made the decision to give up on the Russian front. So if they get their way and succeed in forcing NATO to pivot to war with China, Zelensky will be a major liability and embarrassment to the governments of the West. This very public warning shot across Zelensky’s bow may, in fact, be the first sign that the pivot to China is underway and will soon be followed by an announcement about NATO-Russian negotiations.
UPDATE: CNBC confirms the new narrative on Zelensky.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s conduct is a source of annoyance in Washington, CNBC reported on Wednesday. Zelensky angers his American backers by ignoring their orders and issuing ever-greater demands, anonymous officials told the network.