Ex-actor who’s inspired a nation… and shamed the West: How President Zelensky exemplifies the openness of Ukraine’s political system – in stark contrast to Russia where Putin is president-for-life
As his Ukraine teetered on the abyss, Volodymyr Zelensky delivered the speech of his life in the early hours of Thursday morning. He vowed unflinching resistance to Russian invaders.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine needed a war, he said. ‘Not a cold war, not a hot war. Not a hybrid one.
‘But if we come under attack, if we face an attempt to take away our country, our freedom, our lives and lives of our children, we will defend ourselves.
‘When you attack us, you will see our faces. Not our backs, but our faces.’
They were stirring words. He even switched from Ukrainian to Russian, addressing the Russian people directly in the hope of piercing the toxic fog of propaganda spread by the Kremlin’s lie machine.
The Kremlin lie machine – headed by Vladimir Putin – has been claiming Ukraine is a Nazi-run puppet state of the West
It depicts Ukraine as a Nazi-run puppet state of the West, bent on persecuting ethnic Russians in Ukraine and advancing Nato’s aggressive agenda. Too many believe it.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s mere presence in office dispels that vile slur. Not only is he a native Russian-speaker, who grew up in the country’s heavily Russified south- eastern region. He is Jewish.
Indeed, for a time Ukraine was the only country other than Israel to have both a Jewish head of state and a Jewish prime minister, the president’s ally Volodymyr Groysman.
And Zelensky exemplifies the openness of Ukraine’s political system – in stark contrast to Russia where Putin is president-for-life.
A former actor and political novice, his campaign for election started as a joke but struck a chord with millions of ordinary Ukrainians. In April 2019 he defeated the veteran incumbent and scandal-plagued president, Petro Poroshenko, with an astonishing 72 per cent of the vote.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, pictured, is an native Russian speaker from the south-eastern region of the country. He is also Jewish – which dispels Putin’s lie about Nazism
And this week Mr Zelensky’s unflinching rhetoric has again inspired his country – and shamed the West.
As the invaders cut Ukraine in two, closing on the capital, Kyiv, yesterday morning, the 44-year-old president, dressed in military style T-shirt, warned that Russian death squads were aiming to assassinate him and his family as a way of destroying ‘Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state’.
His wife, Olena, and their two children are at an undisclosed location in the country.
He also issued a mordant rebuke to the West for its inaction. ‘Who is willing to fight alongside us?’ he asked. Ukraine’s darkest hour is its leader’s most shining one.
And it marks an astonishing turnaround. Only a few weeks ago, Zelensky’s presidency was languishing, beset by allegations of sleaze and incompetence.
As the invaders cut Ukraine in two, closing on the capital, Kyiv, yesterday morning, the 44-year-old president, dressed in military style T-shirt, warned that Russian death squads were aiming to assassinate him and his family as a way of destroying ‘Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state’
His attempts to reform Ukraine’s horrendous corruption had become bogged down.
His rating had plunged to a record low. His attempts to win international diplomatic support in the West were perceived to have failed, and so too had the attempt to defuse tensions with Russia.
His inner team combined inexperience and highly questionable judgment. It seemed that his presidency was fizzling as quickly as it flared.
For it is only four years ago that Zelensky, a law graduate who turned to showbusiness, was a middle-ranking actor in a popular political satire — in a British context somewhere between Monty Python and Yes Minister. Called Servant of the People, it starred him as a humble, harassed but idealistic schoolteacher whose televised rant about corruption goes viral, leading to his unexpected election as president.
This fanciful-seeming plot was trumped by reality.
Ukrainians were fed up with Mr Poroshenko, a confectionery tycoon whose patriotic rhetoric was undermined by persistent allegations of corruption.
They wanted change. Mr Zelensky’s platform – he called his party Servant of the People after his TV show – lambasting corruption and criticising narrow-minded Ukrainian nationalism – seemed to offer it. Yet the script soon soured as Zelensky’s promised sleaze- busting proved selective at best.
His main backer was Igor Kolomoisky, a tycoon accused by the FBI of involvement in a multi- billion-pound banking fraud.
Mr Kolomoisky, known for displaying his ‘pet’ shark as a means of intimidating visitors, has always denied wrongdoing. Ukraine’s corruption – worse than Russia’s in many eyes – has deep roots.
Power and wealth are deeply intertwined. Among the public, mistrust of a predatory state is entrenched, and all too justified.
Oligarchs run media empires, with politicians and officials on the payroll. The judicial system is a festering mess where arrests, prosecutions and verdicts are used as score-settlers between political and commercial rivals. Senior positions are bought and sold.
Healthcare and education are plagued by kickbacks. The security service, the SBU, is infested with intrigue and sleaze – and penetrated by Russian agents of influence.
Mr Zelensky’s team, mostly showbiz pals, stumbled through this minefield. They found that satirising corruption was much easier than uprooting it.
Exasperated voters deserted his party in droves, as criticism from international human rights groups and from foreign governments intensified.
For the tragic truth is that Mr Zelensky is only the last in a line of leaders who have promised much but delivered little during Ukraine’s three decades of independence.
The brave, adaptable Ukrainian people have survived and even thrived despite the incompetence and corruption of their rulers.
Mr Zelensky’s stirring rhetoric and personal bravery are the focus of national unity now. But they do not compensate for his own failures – and those of the rest of Ukraine’s political class.
President: I am target number one, my wife and children are number two
BY JAMES FRANEY
A Russian death squad is hunting the Ukrainian president as its ‘number one target’ and his wife and children as ‘the number two goal’, he warned yesterday.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s comments came in a grim assessment of what would unfold in the country over the next few days and hours.
Dressed in olive-green military apparel, he appeared before TV cameras just after dawn broke yesterday to reveal that Vladimir Putin had sent a special forces squad to hunt him down.
‘The enemy marked me as the number one target,’ said Mr Zelensky, 44. ‘My family is the number two goal.’
President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was Vladimir Putin’s number one target and his family was number two on his hit list
He added: ‘They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.’
The president said he was working out of a secret bunker in Kyiv. His wife Olena, 44, and their two children – daughter Aleksandra, 17, and son Kiril, nine – have been whisked away to a secret location somewhere in Ukraine. ‘I know that a lot of misinformation and rumours are being spread now,’ said Mr Zelensky. ‘In particular, it is claimed that I have left Kyiv. I remain in the capital, I am staying with my people. My family is not a traitor, but a citizen of Ukraine.’
He spent much of yesterday on social media scotching rumours that he had fled.
In a video on the Telegram encrypted messaging service, he vowed to fight back against the Russian forces attacking the capital.
‘We’re all here defending our independence, our country, and it will stay this way,’ he said in the self-shot footage taken with aides outside the presidency building. ‘Glory to our defenders, glory to Ukraine, glory to heroes.’
The president said he was working out of a secret bunker in Kyiv. His wife Olena, 44, and their two children – daughter Aleksandra, 17, and son Kiril, nine – have been whisked away to a secret location somewhere in Ukraine
In a chilling early-hours exchange with EU leaders in which he made a desperate plea for tougher sanctions against Moscow, Mr Zelensky also warned: ‘This is the last time you might see me alive.’ Hours earlier Putin had called on Ukraine’s armed forces to launch a coup to topple Mr Zelensky.
In a deranged televised address, the Russian president repeated his bogus claims that the government in Kyiv was run by ‘terrorists’ and ‘neo-Nazis’.
‘Take power in your own hands,’ he urged Ukrainian soldiers. ‘Don’t let neo-Nazis and Banderites use your children, wives and parents as a human shield.’
Mr Zelensky urged any Europeans with combat experience to take up arms and fight alongside the Ukrainian army to repel the Russian attacks. ‘If you have combat experience in Europe and do not want to look at the indecision of politicians, you can come to our country and join us in defending Europe, where it is very necessary now,’ Mr Zelensky said, hitting out at some in the West for not doing enough to help.
‘How are you going to defend yourself when you are so slowly helping us in Ukraine?’ he asked. ‘Europe has enough strength to stop this aggression.
‘The columns of tanks and the air strikes are very similar to what Europe saw a long time ago, during WW2 – something about which it said “never again”. But here it is, again. Now, in 2022 – 75 years after World War Two ended.’
He said all counter-measures must be considered by friendly countries – including visa bans and closing airspace to Russia.
Addressing the armed forces, Mr Zelensky added: ‘Stand strong. You are all that we have. You are all that is protecting our state.’
He spoke as guns and bullet-proof vests were handed to Ukrainian MPs who have vowed to stay and fight back against a possible storming of parliament.
Ukrainian officials said they had handed out 18,000 guns to volunteers, as well as issuing instructions on how to make petrol bombs. Russian forces have moved in from the north, south and the east of the country.
More than 100,000 people are estimated to have fled their homes.
Source: Read Full Article
