DISINFO: Moscow can’t trust any peace agreement as Zelenskyy’s regime is stable only when at war
SUMMARY
Moscow can’t trust Kiev to live up to its part of any agreement. The untrustworthiness of the Ukrainian leadership will loom large for the Russian delegation during an expected meeting in Istanbul, Türkiye, on Thursday. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s regime enjoys relative stability only because of the conflict with Russia, and so may be reluctant to seal a peace agreement with Moscow. It’s unclear how long the regime will last. It may fall apart. Zelenskyy obviously will have many internal problems because he has some Nazi, fascist organisations that would convict him of betrayal. And once Western leaders see Zelenskyy as a liability, they will get rid of him without a second thought.
RESPONSE
This disinformation story is part of a wider campaign aiming to manipulate the information environment around Putin’s call for direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in May 2025.
This disinformation piece targets President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, trying to discredit him and his leadership by baselessly framing him and his government as unreliable and unstable, and as interested in the continuation of the war for its self-preservation. This could be an attempt to pre-emptively blame Zelenskyy and Ukraine if the Istanbul negotiations do not succeed, which may happen given that Russia maintains its maximalists capitulation demands, which remain unchanged since the beginning of the invasion. See our article The old deceiver.
The claim that Western leaders may ‘get rid’ of President Zelenskyy is unsubstantiated and serves as an attempt to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty by falsely portraying its government as being controlled by Western powers.
One of the goals of this disinformation story is to undermine Zelenskyy’s continuity in power, as Russia has always perceived him as an obstacle to its aggressive goals in Ukraine, even since before the invasion. One of the targets of the invasion in February 2022 was the murder of Zelenskyy and the decapitation of the Ukrainian government to install a pro-Russian leadership. See our article Why is the Kremlin so hung up on smearing Zelenskyy?
At the moment, Zelenskyy is the legitimate elected leader of Ukraine, after having won the 2019 election by a landslide with over 73% of the vote. While this popularity may have changed over the years, his approval rate remained very high at the time this disinformation story appeared. A survey conducted by Ipsos/The Economist in mid-March 2025 showed that 72% of Ukrainians approved his job as President, while 80% considered that he had democratic legitimacy as President.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Zelenskyy is increasingly irrelevant, even in Ukraine, that Ukraine’s fate no longer in Zelenskyy's hands, that the disgraced dictator of Ukraine Zelenskyy is an extension of the EU, that Zelensky is an actor who reads a script as part of a play, that Zelensky is not working in the interests of Ukrainians but to please the European elites, or that Zelenskyy can’t sign a peace deal because he is not a legitimate president.