Preview: “You Will See Our Faces, Not Our Backs”: Zelensky’s Promise To Russia
New book provides in-depth study of the man and the nation that defied Putin’s armies and is now re-charged with $61-billion in aid!
“Maybe a different path in life would have prepared him better to lead his country through the war. But now, looking back, I’m not so sure.”
So writes Simon Shuster, author of “The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky.” His book is powerful and an instant best-seller, written by the sure hand of the Time correspondent who had been reporting from Ukraine since 2009. He followed Zelensky through the rising of war tensions to the day he stood in Congress in America making a speech that received 13 standing ovations “before their frequency forced me to give up counting.”
Shuster’s subject is already a hero, though the term would make him cringe. Volodymyr Zelensky was an entertainer – a comedian – before he became President of Ukraine. As Shuster points out, it was a difficult world, and it toughened Zelensky in a way that professional politicians would not know. If he had listened to the professionals when the first bombs fell, he would have formed a government-in-exile, because everyone knew that Ukraine was finished and its leadership would die.
Instead, the actor reached back to Ukrainian heroes and put on a performance that inspired the nation and then the world.
He was a man who was internally driven to win.
It had always been in his character. Years later, when he recalled show entertainment competitions from his childhood, Zelensky admitted that, for him, “Losing is worse than death.”
He faced an uphill climb.
Trump was president for the first part of his leadership, and had known all along that Ukraine was at war with Russia, that its soldiers were sitting in trenches in the Donbas, taking sniper fire and sleeping in the mud. He knew that people were dying out there, and he still decided to block the military aid Ukraine needed to defend itself. Trump did enormous damage to Ukraine’s reputation. His incessant talk of corruption had signaled to the world’s financial institutions that the new government in Kyiv was not a reliable partner.
The U.S. and its European allies had long refused to offer Ukraine a clear path to joining their alliance. They spent a decade and a half stalling Ukraine’s requests for membership, and their fears of antagonizing Putin kept them from arming Ukraine with the weapons it needed to defend itself.
Zelensky, at first, was reluctant to believe that a hot war would break out. When Russian tanks started shooting, he was said to have an expression on his face that wasn’t fear - it was a question: ‘How could this be?’…
To everyone, thank you for reading Barry’s Substack.
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