OPINION & COMMENTARYIV THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2019
INTELLIGENCE/PAMELA DRUCKERMANVenezuela’s
Shadow Diplomacy
Volodymyr Zelensky, Man in the Muddle
Paris
When I first met Isadora Zubil-
laga in New York some 20 years
ago, she was a young venture cap-
italist investing in Latin Ameri-
can start-ups, and I was a young
reporter covering Latin America.
She never mentioned politics. We
soon lost touch.
So I was surprised when Ms.
Zubillaga emailed me recently to
say that she was Venezuela’s new
ambassador to France, where I
live, and could we catch up over
coffee?
I was soon plunged into the
tragic maelstrom that is Venezue-
la today; I left wondering what is
to become of that country.
When I sat down with Ms.
Zubillaga, now 51, she was still
as exuberant as I remembered,
catching me up on the past two
decades in the same accented but
hyper-articulate English I remem-
bered. After a stint in the United
States, which also included work
at a human rights nonprofit, she
returned to her native Caracas
in 2005. There she worked for the
nascent opposition leader Leopol-
do López, eventually helping him
found a political party to challenge
then-President Hugo Chávez.
Now she is a diplomat.
It was only when I pressed her
that Ms. Zubillaga acknowledged
why we were meeting in a cafe
instead of at the Venezuelan em-
bassy across town: She does not
actually work there. A man who
also calls himself the ambassador
does. She picked this cafe be-
cause when she comes to Paris for
meetings, she sleeps nearby on a
friend’s couch.
“Venezuela has two presidents
right now, one the legitimate pres-
ident, Guaidó, and the other, the
illegitimate president, Maduro,”
she explained, adding a key de-
tail: “The control of the territory
and the assets are in the hands of
Maduro.” That is Nicolás Maduro,
the successor to Mr. Chavez, who
presides over a murderous, klep-
tocratic government, a collapsed
economy, chronic shortages of
food and medicine and the des-
perate exodus of some four mil-
lion citizens.
Ms. Zubillaga is part of a par-
allel diplomatic corps — a kind of
court in waiting — representing
Juan Guaidó. In January, Mr.
Guaidó, the head of Venezuela’s
National Assembly, asserted that
the Constitution makes him the
interim president because the
2018 presidential vote was fraud-
ulent. Nearly 60 countries, includ-
ing France and the United States,
recognize him as such.
Mr. Guaidó — Ms. Zubillaga
calls him President Guaidó — has
38 envoys, mostly in Europe and
Latin America, often in places
where Mr. Maduro has ambassa-
dors, too.
But since Mr. Guaidó does not
control the country, his envoys
operate in a diplomatic gray zone.
Many have day jobs. The repre-sentative in Sweden teaches at a
business school.
The envoys’ status depends on
the context. Mr. Guaidó’s emis-
sary in Washington, Carlos Vec-
chio, is recognized as ambassador
and — following a standoff — now
has possession of the embassy.
Ms. Zubillaga is “Madame Ambas-
sador” among the Lima Group of
Latin American nations and Can-
ada. But the French government
calls her a “special envoy”; despite
recognizing Mr. Guaidó as pres-
ident, it considers Mr. Maduro’s
appointee to be the ambassador.
Many of Mr. Guaidó’s diplo-
mats are exiles themselves. Ms.
Zubillaga fled Venezuela in 2014
after she and her family were
subject to a violent home invasion
and the country’s second-in-com-
mand, Diosdado Cabello, called
her a terrorist on TV.
“I woke the kids at 5 o’clock in
the morning, it was still dark, and
I said, ‘We’re not going to school
today, we’re going to New York,’ ”
she said.
They later moved to Madrid,
where Ms. Zubillaga had a job
with an organic olive oil company,
and got a Spanish passport. At
night she worked for the Venezue-
lan opposition, speaking to fami-
lies of political prisoners.Since Ms. Zubillaga was famil-
iar with France — she has a mas-
ter’s degree from the Sorbonne —
she began representing the oppo-
sition here. In 2018, she was part
of a delegation received publicly
by President Emmanuel Macron.
Now as “special envoy” she meets
regularly with members of Mr.
Macron’s foreign policy team.
Thanks to the opposition,
“there is a consensus in the world
that we have a dictatorship that
has destroyed the economy, that
has destroyed the governability,
that we have a failed state,” Ms.
Zubillaga said.
She said Mr. Guaidó’s team
wants to be ready to start re-
building the country as soon as he
takes over. “We need to introduce
ourselves as a new government
that is serious, that is professional
and that is competent,” she said.
“I want the transition to be very
civilized and peaceful. They will
realize that they have to go.”
But will these valiant efforts
make a difference?
Washington has ratcheted up
economic sanctions against Mr.
Maduro’s government, but it
seems to have little appetite for a
military intervention.
Inside Venezuela, the regime
suppresses dissent by detaining,torturing and sometimes killing
its critics. Human rights groups
say that since 2017, death squads
have executed thousands of peo-
ple, often inside their homes. Ms.
Zubillaga and the millions of other
Venezuelans who have fled their
country might never go home.
Ms. Zubillaga soldiers on, confi-
dent that her side will eventually
prevail. “This is an epic,” she ex-
plained. “We have suffered prison,
torture, people of our team have
been killed, shot in the head or
the chest, and we’re still standing
without losing our commitment to
democracy and our constitution.”
She recently got an addition-
al title — deputy presidential
commissioner for foreign affairs
— and was part of a Venezuelan
delegation at the United Nations
General Assembly in New York.
But a team of Mr. Maduro’s diplo-
mats was there, too.
I do not pretend to know what
would happen if the opposition
ran Venezuela, but it would have
to be an improvement. Because
I am moved by Ms. Zubillaga’s
work, and out of journalistic obli-
gation, I paid our cafe bill. “Thank
you for helping Venezuelan de-
mocracy,” she said, before rush-
ing off to another meeting. It was
the very least I could do.In April, Ukrainian voters took
a desperate gamble and elected
as their president a television per-
former who played a schoolteach-
er, Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko,
on a show called “Servant of the
People.” On the show, a rant by Mr.
Holoborodko against Ukraine’s
culture of corruption had gone vi-
ral, capturing the mood of a young
country profoundly frustrated by
the state of affairs and ready for
change.
The question ever since has
been whether Volodymyr Zelen-
sky, the comedian who played
Mr. Holoborodko and now leads
Ukraine, is indeed the corrup-
tion-buster whose guiding thought
as president is: “One should act in
a way that doesn’t evoke shame
when looking into children’s eyes.
Or their parents’. Or yours.”
The transcript of Mr. Zelensky’s
telephone conversation with Pres-
ident Donald J. Trump does evoke
embarrassment. He demeans
himself before Mr. Trump, calling
him a “great teacher,” joining him
in trashing European leaders,
bad-mouthing the American am-
bassador Mr. Trump fired for all
the wrong reasons and pledging
to work on the investigations that
Mr. Trump was seeking for his own
political ends. He also notes that he
stayed in one of Mr. Trump’s hotelsthe last time he was
in the United States.
But whether that
performance was
Mr. Zelensky re-
vealing his real self
or his Holoborodko
character colliding
with rude reality is a
tough call. Ukraine,
as Mr. Zelensky has
noted, is fighting two
wars — one against
entrenched corruption fueled by
a coterie of oligarchs, the other
against rebel secessionists in east-
ern Ukraine propped up by Russia.
Contrary to what Mr. Trump
and Mr. Zelensky said in their
phone call, the European Union
has been supportive of Ukraine,
financially and diplomatically. But
only the United States can sup-
ply the military muscle Ukraine
needs to resist Russia, and in Mr.Zelensky’s view, only a meeting
with the president of the United
States would establish the stand-
ing and stature he required.
Mr. Zelensky was probably
aware that Mr. Trump continued
to regard President Vladimir Pu-
tin of Russia as a soul mate; he
may have been equally aware of
Mr. Trump’s disdain for Ukraine
and belief in discredited far-right
conspiracy theories that claimed
Ukraine meddled in the 2016 elec-
tion on behalf of Democrats. He
may have been apprised of Mr.
Trump’s comments about Ukrai-
nians after a briefing by the Amer-
ican delegation to Mr. Zelensky’s
inauguration: “They’re terrible
people. They’re all corrupt, and
they tried to take me down.”
From Mr. Zelensky’s perspec-
tive, his approach worked, at least
in the short term. The White House
did release the military assistancefor Ukraine that it had withheld.
In the end, Mr. Zelensky did not
bend to Mr. Trump’s envoys’ re-
quest that he promise in writing to
conduct investigations of Joe and
Hunter Biden and the 2016 cam-
paign. But neither did he get what
he most wanted: a high-profile
meeting with the American pres-
ident at the White House. At least
at home and in Europe, though, he
has a lot of apologizing and back-
tracking to do.
It would only make matters
worse for the United States and
other Western powers to turn away
from his five-month-old adminis-
tration over an incident in which he
was manifestly more victim than
accomplice. The greatest bene-
ficiary, then, would be Mr. Putin,
whose major goals have always
been to block the rise of a demo-
cratic Ukraine and to undermine
the image of liberal democracy.Pamela Druckerman is a
contributing opinion writer and
the author of “There Are No
Grown-Ups: A Midlife Coming-of-
Age Story.” Send comments to
[email protected].
EDITORIALS OF THE TIMES
MANAURE QUINTERO/REUTERSVene z ue la’s
opposition leader,
Juan Guaidó,
center, whom
many nations
have recognized
as the country’s
rightful interim
leader, arriving
at a session of
Vene z ue la’s
National
Assembly in
Caracas on
October 1.ILLUSTRATION BY LIZZIE GILL; PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN LAMARQUE/
REUTERS, WOJCIECH OLKUSNIK/EPA VIA SHUTTERSTOCK