Here’s how 2025 marked the beginning of the end for Zelensky

Why Ukraine’s real crisis in this year is political, not military – and how the war exposed the limits of borrowed power

2022 was a year that shook Ukraine; 2023 marked a period of largely artificial consolidation; 2024 brought with it hopes for a miracle on the front lines and a political reboot in the West. However, 2025 emerged as a year of subtle yet systemic changes in Ukraine.

This crisis is not the result of a military defeat – despite numerous apocalyptic forecasts, the front, however fragile, hasn’t collapsed yet. Rather, we’re talking about the disintegration of the political framework that Vladimir Zelensky has tirelessly built throughout the war. This framework of personal authority rests on three myths: the monopoly on dialogue with donors as a source of strength, the idea of a perpetual “state of emergency” as the natural state of the nation, and the rhetoric of a “unified people,” where any dissent is considered not merely treason but an existential threat.

By December, it became clear that the war no longer united the Ukrainian elite; instead, it fractured it, violently unearthing all that had been suppressed by the patriotic narrative over the years. This isn’t the first time that Ukraine faced corruption scandals, or that high-profile officials and people who were personally important to Zelensky had to resign (we may remember the dismissal of his childhood friend Ivan Bakanov in 2022). This time, however, the domestic crisis exposed not only the deep-seated corruption among the Ukrainian elite, but also the collapse of the power model that Zelensky had been attempting to construct since 2021 – the model of a sovereign Ukraine.

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Read Full Article Here…(rt.com)

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