Ukraine’s Zelensky: Wartime hero or authoritarian liability?

• Ukrainian President Zelensky faces growing criticism for authoritarianism and corruption despite Western media portraying him as a hero.
• Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter argues that Ukraine’s military success is due to NATO billions, not Kyiv’s own strength, and that Russia is winning the war.
• Zelensky centralized power, sidelined rivals, and rammed through a law stripping anti-corruption agencies of independence before public backlash.
• A $100 million corruption scandal involving a close Zelensky associate emerged, with 59% of Ukrainians blaming Zelensky personally.
• Carpenter dismisses the narrative of Ukraine as a democratic champion, calling it propaganda that hides a corrupt, authoritarian proxy state.

When a New York Times columnist recently declared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “the new leader of the free world,” it marked a new peak in Western media hero worship of the wartime leader. But a growing chorus of critics, including a veteran scholar at the Libertarian Institute, is pushing back hard against what they call dangerous propaganda that ignores Ukraine’s battlefield struggles, domestic corruption and increasingly authoritarian rule.

Carpenter dismantles the “leader of the free world” narrative

Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and the Libertarian Institute who spent 37 years at the Cato Institute, published a blistering rebuttal on AntiWar.com. Carpenter specifically targets an April 26 column by conservative pundit David French, who argued that Ukraine’s military has “fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process.”

French wrote that “the largest and most battle-hardened land force in the Western world may well be the Ukrainian Army” and that Ukraine is “arguably the world’s leader in drone warfare.”

Carpenter is having none of it. He argues that such claims amount to “propaganda” reminiscent of the prelude to the Persian Gulf War, when journalists hyped Iraq as a military superpower. The reality, Carpenter contends, is far different: “Russia continues to make gains on the battlefield, slowly conquering additional Ukrainian territory.”

Carpenter also notes that “Western officials and their media allies have gone to great lengths to obscure the fundamental reality that Russia is winning the war, albeit in a costlier and more grinding fashion than the Kremlin had assumed.”

Ukraine’s real strength: NATO’s billions, not Kyiv’s might

Perhaps Carpenter’s most damning point is that Ukraine’s military performance stems almost entirely from Western largesse. “Kiev’s military achievements have been overwhelmingly the result of extensive outside assistance,” he writes. “The United States and its European allies have poured several hundred billion dollars into Zelensky’s coffers — despite ample evidence of the regime’s corruption.”

He adds that “NATO has given the Ukrainian military ever more sophisticated and deadly armaments” and that “alliance intelligence operatives have even directly assisted Ukraine in conducting attacks on Russian targets.”

Without that support, Carpenter argues, “Ukraine would be a third-rate political, economic, and military power. Kiev and Zelensky are nothing more than the Alliance’s anti-Russia proxy.”

The authoritarian turn at home

Even more troubling than the military overhype is the myth of Zelensky as a democratic champion. The International Crisis Group reported in a detailed assessment that Zelensky has spent years centralizing power”and sidelining rivals. His approval ratings had fallen below 30 percent just before the 2022 invasion, and his wartime popularity surge has since eroded.

In July 2025, Zelensky “rammed a law through parliament stripping the anti-corruption investigation bureau and prosecutor’s office … of their independence,” according to the Crisis Group. He justified the move as combating Russian influence, but widespread protests and a rare public rebuke from the European Union forced him to backtrack.

The Kyiv Independent wrote that “Volodymyr Zelenskyy just betrayed Ukraine’s democracy — and everyone fighting for it.”

Then came the corruption bombshell. Investigators charged Timur Mindich, a close Zelensky associate, with running a $100 million kickback ring at the state nuclear power company. Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff, stepped down after his home and office were searched. A December 2025 poll found that 59 percent of Ukrainians believe Zelensky bears “personal responsibility” for the alleged corruption.

A leader in name only

French’s column concluded with soaring rhetoric: “It’s in Kyiv, where a courageous leader and a courageous people have picked up the torch America has dropped.”

Carpenter’s response is withering. “One must wonder what alternate universe French calls home. In the real world, Ukraine is a corrupt, authoritarian power that should have no legitimate strategic, economic, or moral relevance to the United States.”

The question that honest observers must ask is straightforward: If Ukraine wins, is it because of Zelensky’s leadership, or despite his consolidation of power and the corruption swirling around him? The evidence increasingly points to the latter. After hundreds of billions in American taxpayer dollars and mounting casualties, the American people deserve a truthful accounting — not another round of hero worship from a media establishment that has too often traded facts for narrative.

Sources for this article include:

Original.AntiWar.com

TheWeek.com

CrisisGroup.org