Volodymyr Zelenskyy: A ‘dictator’, or a ‘Ukrainian Churchill’?
Al Jazeera
A political outsider who upended norms, Zelenskyy is now the face of Ukraine’s defence against Russia. And Donald Trump.
Kyiv, Ukraine – It’s next to impossible to imagine Volodymyr Zelenskyy clean-shaven, clad in casual clothes and cracking jokes right next to the Kremlin.
“I’m here, in the heart of Russia – if it still has a heart,” a radiant Zelenskyy quipped in a satirical “news dispatch” filmed near the Kremlin’s vermilion walls.
The year was 2014, Moscow had already annexed Crimea and was backing separatists in Donbas and pro-Kremlin protesters in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east and south.
Zelenskyy was a comedian, actor and head of the District 95 troupe. Politics, for him, was fodder for sarcastic routines. “You can say, ‘hail Ukraine’ in Moscow, and nothing serious will happen to you,” he said in the video. “Nothing that can’t be handled by modern medicine.”
More than a decade later, he doesn’t crack jokes for a living any more. Instead, he is president of wartime Ukraine – and on Friday is scheduled to meet with his US counterpart Donald Trump in Washington. Three years after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s nation needs more than modern medicine to survive as Trump signals a willingness to sacrifice Kyiv’s interests for a deal with Putin, whom he has previously said he admires.
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