With a serious expression, a two-day beard, exhausted and dressed in a military shirt and a green fleece jacket, Volodymyr Zelensky stared at the camera: “Tonight, on all fronts, the enemy will use all available forces to break our resistance. ”, he said in a message to the nation after the first day of attacks by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. “Vile, cruel and inhuman force. They will raid tonight,” he added. Almost 24 hours earlier, when the worst forecasts had not yet come true, he addressed the Russian citizens and begged them to prevent the aggression. “Listen to the voice of reason. The Ukrainian people want peace,” he told them in Russian. It didn’t work. For three days, the head of the Kremlin has ordered an offensive by land, sea and air against Ukraine, a country that he considers fictitious, the result of historical and diplomatic seams.
A former comic actor and self-made businessman, Zelensky debunks much of the Kremlin’s propaganda about Ukraine and its government, which he describes as a “drug-addicted, neo-Nazi bunch,” where speaking Russian is prohibited and Donbas citizens They are victims of a “genocide”. She was born 44 years ago in Krivyi Rih, a city in the metallurgical belt of the Dnipro region, into a “Soviet Jewish” family, as she once described it—that is, not too religious in a regime where religion was repressed—in which Russian was used more than Ukrainian.
That is what he spoke to Russian citizens this week in another of those emotional messages, one in which he called to avoid the offensive. He also told them about his grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich Zelensky, a veteran of the Red Army during World War II. And from Ukraine, which “gave more than eight million lives for the victory against Nazism.”
Since the prelude to the Russian invasion, Zelenski, who had lost popularity in huge percentages due to his sometimes erratic policies and some splashes to his environment of corruption cases, has grown. The former comic actor, who perfectly manages the language and scenery of television and social networks, has taken a step forward with his specific information to the Ukrainians, the emotional videos he publishes on the internet and the patriotic messages that he They have returned to popularity. “We will fight as long as necessary,” he said this Saturday, after the Kremlin threatened to intensify the attacks.
He has also repeatedly called out European leaders for abandoning Ukraine to Putin’s threat. “If you, my dear world leaders, leaders of the free world, do not forcefully help Ukraine today, tomorrow the war will knock on your doors,” he warned in one of those interventions. The Ukrainian president has turned the Kremlin narratives on its head and compared Russia to Nazi Germany. “Russia viciously attacked our state early this morning, just as Nazi Germany did during World War II,” the Ukrainian leader said. “Our countries are on different sides of world history. Russia is on the evil path.”
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Zelensky, who was initially perceived as a political lightweight and an easy target for Putin, became a foreign policy hawk over the months. Now, he essentially embodies the commander-in-chief of a country at war, resisting the harsh offensive of a state with nuclear weapons and whose army doubles him in troops and means. A country with a citizenry with increasingly patriotic spirits, which is arming en masse to receive an enemy who has tried to sell at home that he would be received with music and flowers.
Ukraine is under heavy attack. The capital is under siege. The forces sent by Putin advance from the north, east and south. And the threat from the Kremlin intensifies. The Ukrainian and US secret services warn that one of the Kremlin’s priority objectives is to behead the government and put in place a Moscow puppet regime. And for that you have to bring down Zelensky. The United States recommended that he leave the country or, at the very least, leave the capital. But the Ukrainian leader assures that he remains – he and his family – in Kiev.
Zelensky swept the 2019 presidential election across the country against Petro Poroschenko, a confectionery tycoon who had taken an iron stance against Moscow. He did it with an anti-corruption and somewhat anti-system discourse. He promised to end the war in the East against Kremlin-backed pro-Russian separatists, which was draining the country and has already caused 14,000 deaths. Poroschenko, his predecessor, had promised to win it.
The Ukrainian leader, who surrounded himself with a group of faithful friends of Krivyi Rih, and with his companions from the Kvartal 25 adolescent theater group, which over the years he turned into a successful producer, launched brilliant policies at the beginning of his term. . The Government, which had a large majority, opened the agricultural land market, carried out a huge digitization campaign and launched a huge road construction program to renew the precarious land routes, in very poor condition throughout the country.
However, his problems with the media, his lack of organization in the teams and controversial measures, such as one that would give the Government control over the Constitutional Court, and another known as “de-oligarchy”, which aims to reduce the influence of Ukraine’s super-rich, but who can also target his enemies, lowered the hopes that Ukrainian citizens had in him. Despite the reforms, Ukraine remains the third most corrupt country in Europe, after Russia and Azerbaijan, according to Transparency International. He was also splashed by the policies of Donald Trump. It was a call between the then American president and his Ukrainian counterpart that triggered the process of impeachment. Trump, who had been freezing defense aid for Ukraine for some time, asked Zelensky in that conversation for the “favor” of opening an investigation against Hunter Biden and his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, then a Democratic candidate for the election. 2020 presidential race.
Zelensky then appeared as a weak president. And the episode worried many at the beginning of the Russian crisis, when Moscow began to accumulate soldiers along the borders with Ukraine and raised threats against Kiev, for its intention to enter NATO, and against the Atlantic alliance. There have also been doubts about his team. And President Zelensky has received harsh criticism of the opposition’s handling of him. Criticism now kept in a drawer, when the opposition (except for the small group of pro-Russians) has focused on supporting Zelensky in his talks with the allies to try to push them to impose more sanctions on Russia and receive more weapons.
Meanwhile, Zelensky continues to address the citizens, whom he has encouraged to take to the streets to throw the rest to defend the country, with weapons, with Molotov cocktails or whatever they can reach: “Be prepared to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities.
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