I’ve heard this before
Stories that Volodymyr Zelensky is a modestly successful comedian, that he has no support inside the country, that time is running out, that Ukraine exists only because of American aid, and most importantly – that Ukraine should never have started the war (compare to "Russia doesn't start wars" Russian propaganda narrative), that we should have negotiated from the very beginning instead of fighting, and that Ukraine is to blame for everything – I heard all of this long before Donald Trump voiced it. These were things told to me by Russian interrogators and local collaborator guards when I was in Russian captivity, particularly in the Luhansk prison. The full set was mostly voiced by officers of either the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) or military counterintelligence (no one, of course, introduced themselves during interrogations). They didn’t yet speak of Zelensky’s illegitimacy or the lack of elections – it was still the hot summer of 2022, and it was too early ...