The Washington Post published a surprisingly candid piece on Thursday in response to the widespread outrage that their interview with Zelensky earlier this week provoked among his own people. Titled “Zelensky faces outpouring of criticism over failure to warn of war”, the article points out how this so-called “master communicator” apparently slipped up by admitting that he lied to his compatriots by denying prior reports about what they describe as Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine. To be clear, the reality is that Russia was preparing to resort to military means as a last resort for defending the integrity of its national security red lines in that neighboring country after US-led NATO crossed them. That aside, the point behind their piece is that Zelensky lied, people died, and Ukrainians are upset.

This influential Mainstream Media (MSM) outlet’s report quotes a couple Ukrainians who expressed outrage at what their leader just revealed, which they implied was representative of popular opinion in the days after his initial interview was released. Rightly described by the Washington Post as Zelensky’s “first serious communications crisis”, the reason why millions of people are so angry is because he casually explained away his lie as alleging that it saved Ukraine $7 billion a month from October onward. Evidently, he believes that his people’s lives have a price tag and aren’t as sacred as he’s always made it seem in his daily video appearances where he pretends to be sad about all those who died. If he’d just told Ukrainians the truth, many might have either fled or better prepared themselves for the conflict.

Instead, the vast majority of the population was caught off guard after trusting his repeated reassurances that no such Russian military action was imminent, which indisputably resulted in increasing the loss of life. This is especially the case after Amnesty International proved that Kiev’s forces illegally militarized residential areas near the front lines and thus exploited civilians there as human shields in a desperate last-ditch attempt to stop Russia’s slow but steady advance over the past six months. That, however, might have been one of the reasons why he refused to warn his people about what was about to happen since his military officials might have had a Machiavellian “defense plan” this entire to time to disproportionately rely on a policy of human shields.

Had Zelensky leveled with his people months ago and told them about what was about to happen, then the horrors that millions of them experienced – including at the direct hand of their own government – could have been avoided. The speculative preplanned human shield “defense plan” coupled with his oligarchic backers’ economic-financial interests are the reason why he declined to do so, which exposes this “master communicator” as nothing but a master manipulator, or rather, the puppet that his warmongering Western patrons exploited in order to manipulate the Ukrainian population. His lies affected each and every Ukrainian, which is why so many of them are suddenly turning against him, thus prompting the Washington Post to surprisingly report about this abrupt shift in public opinion.