In the 10 months since the Russian invasion of his country, Volodymyr Zelensky has been transformed into the second coming of Winston Churchill. TIME recently named him its "Person of the Year" in what the magazine conceded was a pretty easy call. It heralded the Ukrainian president for "proving that courage can be as contagious as fear, for stirring people and nations to come together in defense of freedom, for reminding the world of the fragility of democracy—and of peace."
That sort of extravagant paean to the t-shirt-wearing former comedian is typical of the treatment Zelensky gets in the mainstream media. And he's used it to good effect as the Biden administration has poured massive sums of U.S. taxpayer money into Ukraine. As of last month, the tally of American aid sits at $68 billion with President Joe Biden asking for an additional $37 billion.
Given that few Americans cared when Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, it's arguable that much of the current sympathy for Ukraine is a result of the country getting mixed up in the effort to impeach former president Donald Trump. For some, support for Ukraine is linked to antipathy for the former president and belief in the myth that the 2016 election was stolen via his collusion with Russia.
Nevertheless, the willingness of much of the world to rally around Zelensky is a natural reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion and the Ukrainians' brave fight to preserve their independence. Combine that with Zelensky's skill at public relations, which has led many to regard any criticism of him or his government as Russian propaganda.
Yet a closer look at life in Zelensky's Ukraine reveals that it is not the paragon of democracy and Western values that everyone seems to think it is. Ukraine is a deeply corrupt country with wealthy oligarchs playing the same role there as they do in Putin's Russia. Using the war as an excuse, Zelensky has banned his political opposition and shut down all media not controlled by his regime.
The latest example of his authoritarian style is even more egregious.
Zelensky's attempt to bar Orthodox churches that answer to the Russian Orthodox Church ought to dispel any notion that Americans are supporting Western values of freedom in this war.
In defense of this outrageous policy, Zelensky's Western apologists have pointed to the fact that among those publicizing the charge are Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson, whom they regard as Putin sympathizers. They've also denounced the church as a tool of Putin. The discovery of pro-Russia literature in some churches is being proclaimed as proof of treason. Others are dismissing the initial cries of outrage as misinformation. Zelensky hasn't banned the Orthodox Church, his apologists say. Orthodox Christians are free to worship and attend services, but only in approved Ukrainian Orthodox churches that look to religious leaders in Kyiv rather than Moscow.
Ukraine is locked in a bitter war with Russia and emotions are running high, with special scrutiny of anyone who sympathizes with the invaders. With Ukraine's massive intelligence services focused on ferreting out those suspected of collaboration with the enemy, it was probably inevitable that those elements of the Orthodox Church still linked to Russia would come under suspicion.
This approach toward the Orthodox Church clearly contradicts those eager to portray this war as a clear-cut conflict between an authoritarian oppressor and a democratic underdog.
While Putin, in his quest to reassemble the old Tsarist and Soviet empires, should not be allowed to extinguish Ukraine's right to self-determination, the reality on the ground is that many ethnic Russians and Russian speakers living in the country don't identify with Ukrainian nationalism. So even churches that take no part in the conflict are seen by Zelensky and his cohorts as enemies.
Democracies at war shouldn't be judged in the same light as countries at peace. The exigencies of war might excuse some forms of press censorship to preserve military secrecy or even abridgment of certain rights to prevent the success of those bent on destroying one's nation. Yet many democracies have successfully fought desperate wars without suspending basic freedoms and suppressing all dissent, let alone shutting down churches.
The apt comparison for Zelensky's move against the Russian Orthodox Church here is not to democracies under siege but to communist China, which for decades limited Christian worship to only those Catholic or Protestant churches that pledged fealty to Beijing and the Communist Party and not to any independent religious authority.
One would think that this latest evidence of the dictatorial nature of the Zelensky regime would take some of the shine off his reputation as the 21st century's hero of democracy. But so strong is belief in his virtue that little attention is being paid to the truth about what he is doing.
None of this lessens Putin's criminality. But if President Biden and his mainstream media cheering section are determined to keep asking Americans to pay for an endless and unwinnable war that is causing enormous suffering rather than pushing to end it, they should at least be honest about the man who is getting all this money.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
