Pro-Kremlin propaganda claims that Volodymyr Zelensky is an illegitimate leader who betrayed his people, continuing the war with Russia, and that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties
NEWS: MP Oleksandr Dubinsky has accused illegitimate President Zelensky of six cases of betraying Ukraine’s interests. The MP has published a list of six accusations against Volodymyr Zelensky on his Telegram channel, calling them instances in which he betrayed the Ukrainian people. He recalled that the current head of state is illegally holding the power, as his five-year term has expired […]
Zelensky lied when he promised to end the conflict. Instead, he sabotaged the Minsk negotiations in November 2019, which was a second betrayal of the Ukrainian people.
Later, as the deputy notes, the leader of the Kyiv regime provoked an escalation of the conflict with statements about joining NATO and about the nuclear status. Then, he seems to have refused to sign the Istanbul peace agreement in March 2022. Zelensky's fifth betrayal, according to Dubinsky, was to ignore the US President Donald Trump’s initiative to end the conflict in the fall of 2024. The deputy also paid special attention to recent events, accusing Zelensky of prolonging hostilities, which allegedly led to the deaths of between 70,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian servicemen in the past seven months.
NARRATIVES: 1. Zelensky is illegitimately holding power. 2. Zelensky intentionally sabotaged the Minsk peace agreements. 3. Ukraine rejects reasonable peace offers from Russia and its allies, continuing the war.
PURPOSE: To delegitimize the Ukrainian president; to increase war fatigue in Ukraine; to justify the Russian military actions; to present Russia as an international peacemaker.
Reality: Volodymyr Zelensky is the legitimate president of Ukraine, and Russia has started and continues an unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: Dubinsky's allegations contain numerous falsehoods. First, Zelensky's legitimacy is legally supported. The Ukrainian parliament adopted martial law after the Russian invasion of 2022, which expressly provides for the impossibility of holding elections during the war and the extension of the terms of elected officials. This decision is in accordance with the Constitution and the principles of international law.
It’s Dubinsky, not Zelensky who has legitimacy issues. The pro-Kremlin press seems to ignore the fact that he was arrested for collaboration with the Russian Federation and expelled from the "Servant of the People" parliamentary group after being accused of treason in November 2023 for involvement in information-subversive activities, coordinated by the GRU (Russian military intelligence service). This is not the first time that posts by Dubinsky or other fugitive former parliamentarians in Russia have been associated with the point of view of the Kyiv parliament. Previously, in 2021, the US sanctioned Dubinsky for involvement in Russian-controlled disinformation campaigns targeting the American elections.
The accusation of sabotaging the Minsk agreements is false. OSCE reports show that Russia was the party that systematically violated the agreements, continuing to supply weapons to the separatists and maintaining troops in the Donbass from 2014 to 2022. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President François Hollande confirmed in public interviews that Russia never intended to comply with the agreements, using them only to gain time and consolidate its military positions. The Ukrainian military reported daily violations of the ceasefire by Russian mercenaries. After coming to power, Zelensky met with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin to end the war, but to no avail.
In the spring of 2022, the Istanbul negotiations failed after Russia imposed unacceptable conditions for a sovereign state: the recognition of the annexation of Crimea, the cession of territories in Donbas, and forced neutrality. Moreover, during these negotiations, Russian forces committed atrocities in Bucha, Irpin, and other Ukrainian localities, demonstrating the lack of credibility in the diplomatic process. Investigations conducted by the International Criminal Court confirmed war crimes committed by Russian troops in these locations during the Istanbul negotiations. The Ukrainian chief negotiator, David Arakhamia, later revealed that Russia used the negotiations only to gain time and reorganize its forces after the failure of the initial offensive on Kyiv, which resulted in enormous losses on the Russian side.
Claims about President Trump’s peace initiative are unfounded. There was no official peace plan from the US in the fall of 2024 that Ukraine rejected. The White House has repeatedly confirmed its support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and its right to decide its own future. Talks on peace negotiations were launched only in January-February 2025, without a strategic plan.
Contrary to the propaganda narrative, Ukraine has repeatedly proposed peace plans in accordance with international law, including the 10-point Peace Formula presented by President Zelensky and supported by over 80 countries at the peace summit in Switzerland . Russia continues to impose conditions that would nullify Ukraine’s sovereignty and lead to its surrender. In the spring of this year, Ukraine declared its readiness to unconditionally cease fire for 30 days, but Russia categorically refuses this proposal, continuing the offensive.
It is worth noting that Russia deployed over 150,000 troops to the Ukrainian border before the February 2022 invasion and issued ultimatums regarding the European security architecture, demanding NATO’s withdrawal from Eastern Europe and a permanent blocking of Ukraine’s accession to the alliance. The invasion was planned long before any statement by President Zelensky about the country’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations, which had been anyway included in the 2019 Constitution of Ukraine during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko. The war in Ukraine can be stopped at any moment by the Russian Federation by withdrawing its troops from the territory of a neighboring state.
CONTEXT: The publication KP.RU (Komsomolskaya Pravda) is a Kremlin propaganda tool, frequently used to spread false narratives about the war. The article is part of a broader campaign to delegitimize the Ukrainian leadership and undermine Western support for Ukraine. Choosing Dubinsky as a source is part of a propaganda tactic that uses discredited “Ukrainian voices” to lend apparent credibility to Russian narratives. Russian propaganda attempts to shift responsibility for the continuation of the war to the Ukrainian side, completely ignoring the fact that Russia is the aggressor that invaded the territory of a sovereign country in violation of international law.
The article appears in the context of Russia continuing offensive operations on the Ukrainian front, while promoting the idea that the war is in Kyiv's interest. Russia wants to keep the war going and keep accusing Ukraine of not wanting to negotiate and accept surrender.
Check sources:
