Drawn features, brown beard, iconic khaki T-shirt, sitting at his desk or on the front, President Volodymyr Zelensky has become in 2022 the face of Ukrainian determination to defeat the Russian army. A few weeks before the February 24 invasion, his presidency, which began three years earlier, seemed to be losing momentum, the former actor struggling to keep his electoral promises in a country plagued by poverty and corruption.
Easy then for his rivals to say that the presidential costume is too big for a public entertainer. And to Westerners to be sorry that the new Ukrainian leader is unable to reform the country. “Before the war, many treated Ukraine as a failed state, and Zelensky as a weak leader,” notes political analyst Volodymyr Fessenko.
“We are all here to defend our state”
When, at dawn on February 24, Vladimir Putin launches, the glare, the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow is convinced that the offensive will be short, that the weak Ukrainian power will crumble. kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Odessa: all the major Ukrainian cities are hit, the Russian army is heading towards the Ukrainian capital. “There were rumors that (the Ukrainian president) was going to flee,” recalls Volodymyr Fessenko.
The reality is different. Zelensky makes an impression, appearing in a video filmed in front of the presidential administration buildings, in the center of kyiv, flanked by his advisers. “We are all here, our soldiers are here, the citizens, society, we are all here, to defend our independence, our State”, he launches, gaze planted in the camera.
After more than nine months of war, the fatigue can of course be read on his face eaten by the beard, but every evening his determination is the same, when he addresses the population in videos posted on the networks. social. Meanwhile, Zelensky and his army have inflicted surprise humiliations on Vladimir Putin: in April the Kremlin renounces kyiv, in September it loses the region of Kharkiv then in November Kherson, capital of the eponymous region.
Compare to Winston Churchill
Making him its man of the year, the British daily FinancialTimes does not hesitate to compare him to Winston Churchill, British warlord against the Nazis. “For proving that courage can be as contagious as fear, for inspiring people and nations to unite in defense of freedom, for reminding the world of the fragility of democracy – and peace – Volodymyr Zelensky and the spirit of Ukraine are TIME’s 2022 Personality of the Year,” wrote the editor-in-chief of the American magazine. Time, Edward Felsenthal. A media which also designated the Ukrainian president “personality of the year 2022”.
In Russia, on the contrary, he is presented as the leader of a clique of neo-Nazi genocidaires or drug addicts, even as Satan. “The Russian Orthodox Church must officially proclaim that Zelensky is the arrival of the Antichrist! “, was angry again last week the political scientist Araïk Stepanian, on the antenna of Rossiya 1. But it is well Volodymyr Zelensky, 44 years old, who has mastered the media battlefield, that he appears in Vogue with his wife Olena or in Kherson, a southern city recaptured in November, singing the national anthem surrounded by soldiers. Images that contrast with those of a Vladimir Putin who works as a recluse in the Kremlin, most of his appearances being made by videoconference.
Volodymyr Zelensky also skilfully used his popularity and the suffering of the Ukrainians to wrest more armaments, more financial aid from his Western allies. To this end, he regularly presents his country as a bulwark against Russian imperialism, as a defender of democratic values, as in June, when he said before the Czech deputies that Moscow is aiming for “a vast territory from Warsaw to Sofia, from Prague in Tallinn. He is also incisive towards those who suggest he make concessions to Moscow, such as French President Emmanuel Macron. And Western heads of state like Hollywood stars parade through his offices.
“Zelensky turned out to be a real patriot”
Zelensky, who grew up in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rig in the heart of a predominantly Russian-speaking region, was not predestined for this role. Before entering politics, he had forged a fine career in comedy. In Ukraine, as in Russia for that matter, where he was invited by the same TV channels that are inveighing against him today.
From 2015, he plays, in a successful series, an honest but naive history teacher who becomes by chance president of Ukraine. Fiction therefore catches up with reality with his election in 2019 by Ukrainians tired of their corrupt political class and their billionaire president, Petro Poroshenko. If he failed to meet the expectations of his constituents at the start of his mandate, the war changed everything. “Zelensky turned out to be a real patriot, a fighter, a leader,” notes Volodymyr Fessenko.
At a time when winter is falling on Ukraine at the same time as Russian missiles destroying the country’s energy installations, he will have to preserve the resilience of his people and the determination of his allies. “He must maintain the will of society to resist and (…) the support of the West”, notes Fessenko, because “the weariness of war is a real challenge”.