Professor Alessandro Orsini, the director of the International Security Observatory of the Luiss University of Rome, is increasingly critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his role in the war with Russia.
“Zelenskyy has to make peace with himself. He has to calm down; he is politically incapable,” said Professor Alessandro Orsini during a television program Cartabianca hosted by Bianca Berlinguer on the war between Ukraine and Russia.
“If this is a war that concerns only Russia and Ukraine, Ukrainian President Zelensky does what he wants. If we risk a nuclear war, Zelensky has to calm down and can’t think of plunging into World War III or asking hundreds of companies and Italians to be swept away. If we are involved, Zelensky must accept that Italy and Europe have a say,” said the professor of sociology of international terrorism.
“Five days before the Russian invasion began, German Chancellor Scholz had attempted mediation: Zelensky should have renounced NATO and declared Ukraine neutrality, he refused,” he adds.
“The Italian government must take the lead in the diplomacy of peace; it must make itself available for the recognition of the Donbas and the Crimea. I do not entrust the situation to Zelenskyy; this man is totally incapable of politically speaking”, he says.
“I do not think from a political but a humanitarian point of view: I prefer that children live in a dictatorship and not die under bombs in the name of democracy. A child can be happy even in a dictatorship,” continues Orsini.
Pointing to the horror of the images of the Bucha massacres, Orsini said, “It is a horror; it impresses me that no one thinks of launching a powerful peace initiative. Either Italy sends soldiers to protect the Ukrainians, or we need to make peace. The middle solution is the worst. If the hypothesis is that it was not the Russians: from a moral point of view, nothing changes; there are people massacred every day by the Russians. Italy must take the lead in the peace process, or we will have more massacres.”
Zelensky, an obstacle to peace
Orsini, a fan turned critic, has previously said that actor turned politician Zelenskyy is an obstacle to peace.
“I had boundless admiration for Zelensky; he was a sort of superhero for me. But my perception is now changing,” he said. If Zelensky becomes an obstacle to peace, Zelensky must be abandoned, said Orsini.
The Ukrainian government is carrying out an “absurd line”, and Zelensky has taken “radical positions”, said the sociologist.
“Zelensky and I understand it because in his place, I would think the same things, – said the professor – he prefers World War III rather than being alone against Russia, so we are very careful because Zelensky is assuming a posture that I don’t like because I see it as a danger to peace”.
“If you listen to what the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister ( Iryna Vereshchuk, ed.) said, it doesn’t seem to me that [Zelensky, ed .] is a moderate – says the professor -. Suppose Zelensky thinks the things that the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister said; for me, Zelensky should be isolated, just as Boris Johnson should be isolated “because” Boris Johnson is a man who deeply despises the European Union; he was put there to do Brexit, he is the most warmonger of the pro-European leaders, he was the first to propose to send arms to Ukraine and we, the European Union, are letting Boris Johnson lead us.”
Putin will gut Ukraine
Speaking about the Russian position, Orsini says, “We did not understand that if we put Putin in a desperate condition, Putin will gut Ukraine.” “People in Italy right now are lined up as if there were a football match; it is as if people are not wondering about the consequences of the decisions we make. People think like this: ‘we defeat Putin’ – assuming we succeed in this feat -the people and even the Italian politicians stop there: ‘think how nice if we forced Putin to step back, but what do you expect that would happen? Simply put, in a desperate condition, Putin guts an entire country”.
Orsini’s peace proposal
As per Orsini, “peace is achieved through three fundamental moves”. “The first – he says – is to stop demonizing the political opponent, that is, to represent him as an animal, as Minister Di Maio did. The second is to normalize the political enemy, that is, to transform him into a normal person, that is to say a person like us who has economic interests and political values to defend just like us, and the last move is the humanization of the political enemy, that is, he is not a pig, a beast, a disgusting worm but a human being like us.”
The U.S. and Europe act like Putin
Orsini accuses the west of acting like Putin. “What Putin did to Ukraine, we did it in exactly the same way to Iraq; in fact, in 2003, the UN Security Council was made up of 15 members, of which only four were in favour of the invasion of Iraq – Spain, Bulgaria, the United States and England – the other 11 were against and Chirac, who led France at the time, threatened to veto it. So Bush bypassed the UN Security Council and forcefully waged a hyper-illegal war,” he said.
On December 19, 2021, the New York Times uncovered a secret White House document that consists of 1,300 files, each of these files speaks of civilians massacred in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Orsini states, “If the problem is that Putin is a lousy, a dog, then we can get along with each other, sit around a table and discuss how to save the Ukrainians.”