“The best thing Winston did to win the war,” declared Clement Attlee, British Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951, “was talk about it.” Churchill, Nobel Prize for Literature, has gone down in history for his speeches during the world battle against Hitler. Once he had them written down, he would rehearse, reciting them aloud, searching for the most effective place for a dramatic pause and the rhythm of the repetitions—”we will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the runways, we will fight in the fields and on the streets.” streets, we will fight on the hills. We never give up”-. Volodymyr Zelensky wrote and rehearsed many scripts before winning the Ukrainian elections in 2019. Because before he was president, he was an actor. And that experience is being one of his main assets in an unequal war since it began, 25 days ago.
With a military capacity manifestly inferior to Russia’s, the Ukrainian president has found another powerful weapon of defense: communication. Through social networks, he addresses daily in two languages (Ukrainian and English) to two different audiences: his compatriots, whom he encourages to resist, and the West, which he pressures with data and emotions to increase sanctions on the Russian president. , Vladimir Putin, and support for his country. “Zelenski”, says Mira Milosevich-Juaristi, principal investigator at the Elcano Royal Institute specializing in Russia and Eastern Europe, “dominates the scene, the message and the body language. He may be down or worried, but if he is like that, he conveys the opposite, he acts, because that is the way to keep the morale of his people high. He is clearly winning the narrative of the war and has done so by breaking all the moulds”. For political consultant Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí, he “has become a ‘global and moral leader’. “He is Ukraine’s best weapon of war. He has an extraordinary persuasive ability. His ammunition is words and denunciation.”
The day before the war broke out, on February 23, the president of Ukraine, a country of 44 million inhabitants, had 840,131 followers on Twitter. Today he has more than 5.5 million on that social network and exceeds 16 million on Instagram. These are the keys to his speeches.
Objective 1: Resist. “I’m here”
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Zelensky’s first message to the nation is that there will be no surrender. “We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country.” “Stop the enemy wherever you see him.” He says it because he stays. In a video, surrounded by members of his Cabinet, he explains: “I am here, we are here, protecting the independence of our country and it will continue to be so.” He is, says Gutiérrez-Rubi, “the hero who does not run away, the tireless defender of his country.” That invocation of “heroism”, adds Milosevic-Juaristi, is key to disrupting Putin’s initial plans. “Nobody thought that Ukraine could resist, but it is doing so. Zelensky has morally won the war by holding his people together.”
Objective 2: foreign aid. “If we fall, you fall”
From day one, Zelensky places references and images in his speeches to engage the rest of the world against Putin. “This is not just a Russian war against Ukraine. It is the beginning of a war against Europe.” And he repeats: “Against the unity of Europe. Against elementary human rights in Europe. When the bombs fall on the Ukraine, they fall on Europe. When missiles kill our people, it is the death of all Europeans.” He addresses not only the authorities, but also its citizens: “Demand from your governments more financial and military aid for Ukraine. Protect yourselves as we protect you.” To underline that message, on March 12 he released the shocking simulation of a bombing in Paris in which a tourist took a photo in front of the Eiffel Tower just before a missile fell. “Just think what would happen in another European capital. We will fight to the end, giving ourselves a chance to live. Close the airspace over Ukraine or give us air fighters. If we fall, you fall”, he reads at the end of the video. “Zelenski”, says Gutiérrez-Rubí, “has managed to make it not a local war, but a global war with a huge current of sympathy and complicity throughout the world and has achieved this by leading public opinion in other countries to put pressure on their authorities. ”. Many of the international sanctions against Putin that he called for in the first days of the conflict have become a reality thanks to that pressure, such as the disconnection of some Russian banks from the Swift payment platform. Other measures, such as Ukraine’s entry into NATO, are not.
The power of a t-shirt
The last image of the Ukrainian president in a suit is from February 24, when the war breaks out. Since then he only wears military attire and seeks very sober funds for his interventions. “Zelensky”, says Milosevic-Juaristi, “appears unshaven, in a T-shirt, visiting the wounded, hugging his team, on the street. It is a very well articulated image because it is the opposite image to that offered by Putin, that cold, calculating, insensitive former spy in a suit who places his interlocutors on the other side of an endless table”.
He transmits, also with his clothing and the background without pomp behind him, that he is just another soldier. Says Gutiérrez-Rubi: “The t-shirt is the most honest garment, the closest thing to skin on skin, the one that adds less volume to the body. And that gives it authenticity, an additional strength that connects with the generation millennial. It is the shirt that all young people wear.” There is another big difference with Putin in the staging. “Zelensky speaks directly, it is the war in streaming. And that is also frankness in the face of produced Russian propaganda.”
international pressure. “They are back behind the wall”
Since the war broke out, the Ukrainian president recounts his multiple conversations with other leaders daily on Twitter and has intervened by videoconference in the European Parliament, that of Canada, before the US Congress, and before the German Bundestag (Parliament). Without reading a paper, looking directly at the camera, that is, at the parliamentarians, he takes them to war. He told the Americans: “Just remember it. Remember 9/11, when innocent people were attacked from the air. Our country experiences that every day, right now.” Zelensky also reinforced his message to the US Congress with a video that began by showing Ukraine before the war, with images transferable to any peaceful capital — a woman walking on a sunny day, a father playing with his son in a park. ..— and then poured two minutes of death and destruction: bloodied children and old people, demolished buildings, mass graves…
In front of the Bundestag, always looking at the camera, he assured: “The occupants have killed 108 children. In the middle of Europe. In 2022″. After a long pause, he continued: “Having seen how many ties your companies still have with Russia, with a state that uses them, we realize what you probably haven’t realized yet: you are behind the wall again. The wall between freedom and slavery. And that wall grows stronger with each bomb that falls in Ukraine, with each decision that is not taken in favor of peace. They want to keep the economy, the economy, the economy. They don’t see what’s behind that wall.” Zelenski concluded that speech by paraphrasing Ronald Reagan: “A former actor, president of the United States, once said in Berlin: ‘Tear down that wall.’ And I say to you today, Chancellor Scholz: Tear down that wall, give your descendants something to be proud of.”
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