Ukraine’s leader is showing the Russian strongman what real strength, strength of character, really looks like.
Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine may have begun about as inauspiciously as the dictatorship may have hoped, but a man like Vladimir Putin, a nationalist to the bone and a strongman pushing toward the end of his career, is a man with nothing left to lose. Nearly 70 years old, Putin theoretically faces the end of his tenure in 2024 with little to show for it. He now has a devalued currency, a Western bloc reunified in opposition to his warmongering, and no empire restored to former imagined glory.
Perhaps Putin really is reckless enough to act as desperate men corrupted by absolute power always do, and the very real odds of nuclear war (and thus necessarily, the annihilation of humanity) cannot be written off. But against all the odds of Moscow’s modernized military and a West ranging from the enabling President Joe Biden (recall, he reversed the sanctions his predecessor Donald Trump imposed on Nord Stream 2) and Boris Johnson (just how many Russian oligarchs has the imperiled British prime minister palled around with?) to the actively collaborating former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ukraine has stood shockingly strong. The entire free world may have a comedian to thank for that.
Volodymyr Zelensky was born to Jewish parents in 1978, three years after Putin had already joined the KGB. Whereas Putin spent over a decade of his career as a true believer in the Soviet Union as both an empire and an ideology, Zelensky was just 13 as Ukraine achieved independence. Putin came to power already battle-hardened and hell-bent on revenge against the First World. Zelensky was elected to his presidency with a stint on the Ukrainian version of Dancing with the Stars, having voiced Paddington Bear (yes, the children’s character), and having played a president on TV.
Even without a celebrity president, Ukraine (which believed Western promises that it would earn our protection if it denuclearized) would be obviously outmatched by Russia in terms of sheer military might. Although the global financial establishment has succeeded in freezing Russia’s foreign assets and tanking the ruble, the little financial engine of Ukraine is utterly dependent on the charity of the West. Much of the war, spliced and shared in TikToks and Twitter memes, hinges on digital influencing, both to bolster Western support and to convince combatants at home not to stand down. On that front, Putin has met his match, precisely for all the reasons Zelensky was once regarded as such a laughable presidential prospect.
Putin once understood the crucial influence of image, deploying his own physique to maximize the public’s perception of his own masculinity. Seemingly self-aware of his own shortcomings, for lack of a better term, Putin offset his height (reported to be around 5’7″ — or more than half a foot shorter than the 6’2″ Barack Obama and 6’3″ Donald Trump) with his brawny build. With the discipline of a Kardashian, Putin ensured the press would publish staged but seemingly candid photo-ops of him, shirtless, riding horses or hoisting rifles. Putin showed off his prowess in judo and driving a Formula 1 car. Putin didn’t have the visage of a Kennedy, and he didn’t try to pretend he did. All he had to do was come across as a formidable patriarch to restore an empire.
But Putin’s evident paranoia over the coronavirus has castrated that persona. He refuses to meet not just with French President Emmanuel Macron, but also his own advisers without multiple meters of a table socially distancing him. Sen. Marco Rubio has even alluded to some unnamed physical or mental ailment Putin is suffering, which may explain his face, distinctively puffy in recent months, or his fear about COVID-19. All of this plays perfectly to Zelensky’s strengths.
Zelensky is 44 years old, and on his handheld videos from the battle-torn streets of Ukraine, he could come off as a decade younger. He is unpolished and untailored. Unlike Putin, who had to show off pecs to demonstrate power, Zelensky’s authenticity and proven commitment to putting himself in harm’s way for his people, something most Westerners could not even fathom our own leaders doing, is enough. Putin’s schtick as a Dostoyevskian supervillain crisped and creatined for the James Bond era may have worked with the pomp and circumstance of those circuses for global gatherings, but in the heat of war and his panic of the pandemic, Putin looks impotent and pathetic. While Putin sends his own men to certain death in the hopes of conquering a sovereign nation, he hides in terror of an airborne pathogen. Meanwhile, Zelensky, who could have simply fled, has put his own life on the line.
As the saying goes, one death is a tragedy, but one thousand is a statistic. Zelensky has weaponized the premise of that, making himself the hero of a story that the rest of the world could otherwise ignore.
Much has been made of Obama successfully deploying the influence of social media in campaigning or Putin’s own Russian troll farms trying to (and, as a turncoat American media liked to lie about, largely failing at) bamboozle American voters with digital disinformation. But Zelensky, the populist underestimated by elites across the political spectrum, has bested Putin at his own game. Not only is he the better president: He knows how to play the better president on TV.
