From Darling to Dictator: Zelensky Falls Out of US Favor

“It’s an honor to be by your side,” Joe Biden complemented Zelensky as they met in late 2022. “You are the man of the year.”

Zelensky is a “man whose courage would be forged in fire and steel,” Biden said in a rousing, Hollywood movie-style speech in Warsaw in early 2023, claiming that Zelensky “leads a democratically-elected government that represents the will of the Ukrainian people.”

Senior Biden officials heaped similar praise on Zelensky, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailing his “extraordinary courage and leadership and success” during a visit in 2022.

In 2023, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin praised Zelensky’s leadership and dubbed “Ukraine’s fight for freedom is one of the great causes of our time.”

“We’ll be with Ukraine until they prevail in this war,” Biden said alongside Zelensky in June 2024.

Last May, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited a Kiev basement bar to play an unironic rendition of Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World. “We are with you today. And we will stay by your side until Ukraine’s security, sovereignty, its ability to choose its own path is guaranteed,” he promised…