Europe Loses Its Mind for Zelensky

The Ukrainian actor's improbable rise resembles Napoleon Bonaparte's.

Europe’s heads of state were outraged by Zelensky’s reception at the Oval Office. As compiled by ZeroHedge:

• Spanish PM Sanchez says "Ukraine, Spain stands with you."

• French Foreign Minister Barrot says Putin's Russia is the aggressor, there is one necessity: Europe, now the time for words is over, time for action.

• German Chancellor Scholz says Ukraine can rely on Germany and Europe.

• EU's von der Leyen says "be strong, be brave, be fearless, you are never alone, Dear President Zelensky"

• Lithuanian President says Ukraine will never be alone.

• Portuguese PM says Ukraine can count on us to support it

• Czech Republic President says "We stand with Ukraine more than ever. Time for Europe to step up its efforts."

• EU foreign policy chief Kallas says "Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to US, Europeans, to take this challenge."

• Polish PM Tusk posts on X, "Dear Zelensky, dear Ukrainian friends, you are not alone".

• French President Macron says Russia is the aggressor, and Ukraine is the aggressed people. We were all right to help Ukraine and sanction Russia 3 years ago, and to continue to do so.

Reading these statements reminded me of how Europe lost its head for Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1803, Beethoven dedicated his Third “Eroica” Symphony to Napoleon (though the composer changed his mind the following year when Napoleon had himself crowned Emperor).

After seeing Napoleon enter the German city of Jena at the head of French troops, Hegel wrote to a friend:

I saw the Emperor—this soul of the world—go out from the city to survey his reign; it is a truly wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrating on one point while seated on a horse, stretches over the world and dominates it.

In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the character Pierre Bezukhov believes that Napoleon is “a giant” who will liberate and improve all of Europe, including Russia.

What could account for Europe’s love affair with the Corsican of Italian ancestry who began his career as a junior artillery officer in the French Royal Army?

Undoubtedly Napoleon was a skilled military commander who was very good at killing tens of thousands of young men, but why did intellectuals and artists all over the Continent lose their heads for him?

The same question might be asked of Zelensky. I suspect that many of his fans have no idea how he rose to prominence in European affairs. Few probably know that Zelensky was the protege of the Ukrainian billionaire oligarch, Ihor Kolomoyskyi.

As Wikipedia describes his rise to power:

In 2019 Kolomoyskyi owned 70% of the 1+1 Media Group whose TV channel 1+1 aired Servant of the People, a comedy series in which Volodymyr Zelenskyy plays a school teacher who, defying all expectations (including his own), becomes president of Ukraine on an anti-corruption platform. In March 2018, members of Zelenskyy's production company Kvartal 95 registered a new political party called "Servant of the People." Twelve months later, they succeeded in getting their candidate past Yulia Tymoshenko in the first round of the presidential election, and on 21 April 2019 to defeat President Poroshenko in the second round with 73 per cent of the vote.

In an unexpected twist to this story, both the United States and Ukrainian governments turned on Kolomoyskyi in 2020, indicting him for multiple crimes in both countries. As with all things and people in Ukrainian politics—which has long been dominated by rival oligarchs worth billions in a country whose annual household median income is about $1000 U.S.—the reality of Kolomoyskyi’s affairs would probably be extremely difficult to elucidate. That fact that the Biden and Zelensky regimes turned on him doesn’t necessary mean he is guilty as charged. More likely, he’s no better and no worse than the rest of Ukraine’s shady oligarchs, including Victor Pinchuk, who was the single largest donor to the Clinton Foundation.

I mention Zelensky’s career because it reminds me of the movie the The Wizard of Oz and The Matrix about the difficulty of distinguishing reality from an elaborate and convincing simulacrum.

For now, it seems that Zelensky continues to hold great sway of the minds of Europe’s heads of state, just as Napoleon did in 1803, when Beethoven dedicated his beautiful Third Symphony to the Corsican artillery commander.

POSTSCRIPT: Several of my dear readers have suggested in the comments that I compared Zelensky to Napoleon. I did not. I compared Europe’s adulation for Zelensky today to its adulation for Napoleon during the first decade of the 19th century.

Here’s is Herbert von Karajan conducting a performance of it by the Berlin Philharmonic.