Zelensky beats Putin at his own game: Playing a president on TV

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.