Why does Zelensky fail in Latin America?

Jorge Elbaum, Argentine sociologist and journalist, recalled that Zelensky’s first failure in Latin America occurred in July, when the Ukrainian did not obtain the Mercosur members’ support to give a message at the summit that took place in that month in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay.

The analyst remarked that Zelensky did not achieve his goal even though, in his media tours around the world, he has the support and organization of Washington.

“The actions carried out by Zelensky at the international level, especially with these almost cinematographic exhibitions, recovering his past as an actor, are highly digitized operations made possible by the U.S. State Department,” he pointed out.

This characteristic means that the Ukrainian president is seen, even from within Ukraine, increasingly as “a U.S. puppet and offshore operator,” Elbaum said.

That alignment with Washington is also what makes the Ukrainian president fail to consolidate himself as a sympathetic figure for Latin American governments and citizens.

“In Latin America there is great distrust of the United States and everyone sees the thread of Washington’s participation in these operations, which contributes negatively to Zelensky having some participation south of the Rio Grande,” he said.

According to Elbaum, the support that the U.S. strategy in favor of Zelensky may have from right-wing governments in the region such as those of Ecuador, Uruguay or Paraguay is not enough to counterbalance the “distrust” of Latin Americans, who are increasingly convinced that it is a conflict “provoked by NATO”.

The analyst also noted that the growing presence of Russian state media in Latin America has contributed to Latin Americans accessing different information about the conflict.

“Many people want to know a version that is not the one transmitted by the hegemonic media co-opted, bought or allied to the U.S. logic,” he stressed.

Those same hegemonic media are the ones that, in Elbaum’s words, built around Zelensky an image of “a president who loves his country and defends it in military uniform.”

However, with the passing of the months and the success of Russia’s special military operation, they have had to “disguise” his positions.

“Zelensky’s image is sinking within the framework of the military lies that they built, spreading that Russia was going to be defeated and that the weapons provided by the West were going to paralyze the intervention,” he said.

Elbaum pointed out that, in addition, images of acts of violence committed by neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine persist in the retina of Latin Americans, which began to circulate on social networks as the conflict progressed. “These neo-Nazi groups are not isolated but have been rewarded by the government since 2014,” he added.

The Argentine analyst warned that the link between the Zelensky government and these groups “could be hidden for a while but then it began to come out from under the sewer”, to the point of bothering right-wing sectors that, initially, were willing to support to the Ukrainian president.

“That is partly what is happening in Latin America. There is evidence that the groups defeated in World War II, the ethnic Ukrainians who believe they are descendants of Vikings and have historically despised the Slavs and the Russians, have developed processes of annihilation and they are the ones who thought they had taken power in 2014,” he explained.

In dialogue with Sputnik, the Venezuelan analyst Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein pointed out that the U.S. had achieved a “positive impact” around the figure of Zelensky in the first weeks of the conflict that, as events progressed, deteriorated.

“Let’s remember that first vote in the United Nations. Already in the second vote, a month later, the number of supports was lower and then there were no more votes in the United Nations because the truth began to be known,” he warned.

Rodríguez Gelfenstein explained that, while Zelensky “needs to search for relationships throughout the world”, this task becomes “very difficult” in territories of Asia and Africa as a result of the influence of Russia and China. Thus, he began to seek support in Latin American countries governed by oligarchic sectors related to the U.S.

However, he did not find the expected support. “The vast majority of Latin American countries have opted for neutrality,” the analyst emphasized.

With information from Sputnik