Kyiv: He looked gaunt and unshaven after another sleepless night under a Russian attack and bombardment. But Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, struck a defiant tone in a video address on Saturday morning. “I’m here,” he said simply. And he was – in the centre of Kyiv, three days on from Vladimir Putin’s invasion, unbowed and going nowhere.
“Good morning everybody! Ukrainians: there’s a lot of fake information online that I call on our army to lay down arms, and that there’s an evacuation,” he said. “I’m here. We won’t lay down our arms. We will defend our state, our territory, our Ukraine, our children. That’s all I have to say. Glory to Ukraine!”
The longer Zelenskiy manages to hold out, the more heroic a figure he appears, at least in the eyes of a growing number of Ukrainians.
Zelenskiy, a former TV actor and comedian, won a landslide victory in the spring 2019 presidential election. He promised to bring peace to the east of the country and to negotiate with Putin. Three years later he finds himself at war with Russia and leading an against-the-odds struggle against Kremlin occupation and national extinction.
In the run-up to this week’s invasion, Zelenskiy’s ratings had fallen. For weeks, the Biden administration warned that Putin had assembled an invasion force on Ukraine’s borders and was preparing to go in. Zelenskiy demurred. He shrugged off predictions of doom and criticised London and Washington for removing their diplomats to Lviv. There was no reason to panic, he said.
Zelenskiy is a native Russian speaker – something he showed off in his moving address to the Russian people on Wednesday evening, hours before the invasion began. He is also Jewish. He lost relatives in the Holocaust and his grandfather fought against Hitler. His friends and senior advisers come from TV show business.
In 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, one of the country’s most popular TV comedians, surprised the world by becoming Ukraine’s President. In his inaugural speech, Zelenskyy had made a similar speech saying, “We are not the ones who have started this war. But we are the ones who have to finish it.”
After occupying the office, the actor-comedian-turned-president promised a ceasefire in Donbas – a territory is occupied by pro-Russian groups. Almost three years after being in office, Zelenskyy is still fighting his own people in the name of fighting separatism in Eastern Ukraine.
For Zelenskyy, it all began with a satirical TV show – “Servant of the People”, in which he played a character named Vasily Goloborodko, a mid-30s high school teacher who wakes up one morning to realise that he has been elected the country’s president. Through his show, Zelenskyy and his comedy troupe satirised the issue of corruption in Ukraine and depicted what Ukraine could look like when it evolves into a democracy.
In one of his shows, Zelenskyy was seen playing the piano with his penis for over five minutes.
Zelenskyy’s fictional character – a high school teacher who suddenly becomes the president of the country and fights corruption, resonated with the masses. Incidentally, the show was released a year after the massive protests in 2014, which led to the ouster of former President Viktor Yanukovych.
The pro-Russian Yanukovych government was overthrown after refusing to sign a deal with the European Union. As the Russians feared losing its influence in Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea, prompting pro-Russian supporters to rebel in eastern Ukraine.
During the crisis period in Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s show “Servant of the People” catalysed the people of Ukraine against the corrupt government. As a result, he became a household hero in Ukraine, landing him in the president’s seat. Zelenskyy’s campaign was focused on ending corruption. It is alleged that Zelenskyy’s campaign was sponsored by one of Ukraine’s wealthiest and most corrupt oligarchs – Igor Kolomoisky. Considered a puppet of the oligarch Kolomoisky, Zelenskyy tried turning his image as a crusader against oligarchs.
Zelenskiy’s fate over the coming days is grimly uncertain. There is no doubt that Putin is determined to capture Kyiv and to remove Zelenskiy’s pro-western and pro-Nato administration. Moscow’s apparent goal is to install a Russian puppet regime, as in separatist Donetsk, and to annex de facto a vast area that Putin considers to be “historical Russia”.