{"id":1324001,"date":"2025-11-22T13:14:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/do-not-shift-responsibility-onto-the-people-an-open-letter-to-the-president-of-ukraine\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T08:10:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T06:10:50","slug":"do-not-shift-responsibility-onto-the-people-an-open-letter-to-the-president-of-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/do-not-shift-responsibility-onto-the-people-an-open-letter-to-the-president-of-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cStop Blaming the People\u201d: An Open Letter to Zelenskyy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: Author’s Facebook<\/a> page<\/em>
\nDear Mr. President, I did not vote for you \u2014 and today I know for certain that in 2019 I preserved my conscience. Yet I remained silent, because 73% of the country had the right to make their own choice \u2014 a right for which we have all paid an unbearably high price.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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As someone for whom the war began in 2014, I listened with fury to your rhetoric about how we just need to \u201cstop shooting\u201d and \u201clook each other in the eye.\u201d While you painted yourself as a \u201cpeacemaker,\u201d the country was methodically disarmed.<\/p>\n

You downsized the army.
Missile programs were scaled back.
A vertical hierarchy of security forces was built for your own purposes, down to the last cog.<\/p>\n

And then the public was told to go \u201chave a barbecue.\u201d
You opened checkpoints weeks before the invasion and cleared the approaches to the border.
You lied to the people.
And they believed you, because a president has no right to lie on the eve of war.<\/p>\n\t\t