Ukraine has already been “de-nazified,” the Belarusian president believes
The Ukrainian government is out of touch with its own people, who do not want to die in the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said, adding that Vladimir Zelensky has lost the support of the majority of the nation’s citizens.
Kiev’s neo-Nazi ideology does not resonate with Ukraine’s population, the Belarusian leader said in an interview with the Russia-1 channel released on Sunday.
“There are no longer any Nazis,” he claimed, arguing that those few “rabid” nationalists remaining in Ukraine “no longer set the trend,” the president stated. Thus, the neighboring country has virtually been “de-nazified,” he said.
According to Lukashenko, about 70% of Ukrainians “hate Zelensky because he promises one thing and does another; because people are dying.” The Belarusian leader did not elaborate on the statistics behind his estimates but noted that his nation has recently faced a large inflow of Ukrainians of fighting age who are “fleeing from the war” with their families.
Belarus provides some of them with work and accommodation, Lukashenko said, while others moved further to Western nations. “Out of them, 99% are men who do not want to fight,” the president added.
Poll results published by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in early June suggested that about 43% of Ukrainians believed democracy was in decline under Zelensky. Of those, 28% blamed the authorities, while only 11% pointed to the conflict with Russia as the main cause of the deterioration. Almost half of respondents also stated that economic conditions, including transparency and the government’s fairness towards businesses, had worsened during Zelensky’s rule.
Zelensky remains in power in Ukraine despite his term officially expiring on May 20. The politician opted to scrap presidential elections, citing the martial law he imposed due to the ongoing military conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that the Ukrainian leader’s legitimacy as president has “expired.” According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Zelensky’s approval rating stood at 17% even before his term formally ended. “Over 70% of the public distrusts all Ukrainian media, while about 90% would like to leave the country,” the SVR said in May, adding that the situation has sparked concerns among Kiev’s Western backers as well.
