Unlike Me, Zelenskyy Is Not Free to Rage at the Barbarians Within
- john raymond
- Aug 21
- 2 min read
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has every right to rage. His nation bleeds daily under missiles and drones. His people endure slaughter, deportation, and ruin at the hands of a regime committed to their eradication.
And yet, though he feels this fury more deeply than any Western statesman can fathom, he does not give it voice.
Zelenskyy cannot.
He is bound by the cruel necessities of coalition politics. He must remain the calm statesman, the moral titan who offers the hand of civilization even as barbarians hammer at the gates.
He cannot erupt against those within the Western alliance whose treachery abets the enemy—against the Trumps, the Orbáns, the cynics who sabotage unity while pretending to serve peace.
For if he named them as they deserve, he would fracture the very alliance Ukraine needs to survive.
But unlike him, I am free to rage.
And rage I must, because to understand Zelenskyy’s restraint is to recognize its cost. Every time he tempers his fury, it is not because the barbarians within are innocent, but because they are shielded by the selfishness of the West.
Our societies, grown complacent in comfort, tolerate them. We allow Orbán to posture as a mediator even as he serves the Kremlin. We allow Trump to strut as a leader even as he advances Moscow’s aims.
We allow the politics of surrender to masquerade as pragmatism, to call weakness “peace.”
Zelenskyy, in his discipline, transforms rage into moral authority. He points to the barbarians without—Putin and his armies—and summons the civilized world to resist.
But he cannot enumerate the barbarians within, though he sees them clearly, for doing so would risk alienating allies who lack the wisdom born of suffering.
Ukraine suffers so that the rest of us might learn what civilization requires. And yet many in the West still refuse to learn.
That is why I rage in his stead. Because the truth Zelenskyy cannot speak is the one we most need to hear: that barbarism is not only at the gates, it is inside our walls.
That barbarism wears Western suits and speaks Western tongues. It obstructs, delays, equivocates, and bargains away the survival of free nations.
And unless we—the so-called civilized—reject these traitors within, we will hand victory to the barbarians without.
Zelenskyy masters himself for the sake of humanity. But I will not pretend restraint where rage is demanded.
The barbarians are not only Putin’s armies.
They are also the men we have allowed to lead us astray.
Comments