As Russian bombs fell throughout Ukraine, the distinction between the leaders of the warring nations couldn’t be starker.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, 69, on Sunday sat stern-faced, his tie pulled tight, at a protracted desk along with his protection officers off to the aspect. He appeared a solitary determine as he raged in opposition to the “aggressive actions” of the West and summoned Russia’s nuclear forces to be placed on excessive alert.
In Ukraine, a T-shirt-clad President Volodymyr Zelensky, 44, was on the streets of Kyiv, posting yet one more defiant video to social media. “I’m right here,” he mentioned on the cellphone recording. “We won’t lay down any weapons. We’ll defend our state as a result of our weapons are our fact.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
(Alexei Nikolsky / Related Press)
It was two totally different kinds, two totally different generations, and two totally different visions of Europe. The warfare for Ukraine could also be removed from determined, however within the public relations battle, Zelensky is clearly profitable.
A lawyer-turned-comic who wielded the ability of social media to leap from enjoying Ukraine’s president on a well-liked tv collection to truly being elected president in 2019, Zelensky speaks to a contemporary Europe looking for to maneuver past the nationalist tendencies that ignited two world wars.
Putin, who laments the collapse of the Soviet Union because the “biggest geopolitical disaster” of the final century and “a real tragedy” for his individuals, glowers, threatens and brandishes his military. A former KGB agent, he embodies the continent’s Chilly Conflict previous, intent on resurrecting a world order that started to crumble again when Nintendo Sport Boy was the fashion and Zelensky was solely 11 years previous.
There was a way, as worldwide leaders imposed ever-harsher sanctions on Russia and Putin appeared ever extra remoted, that Zelensky’s quicksilver charisma and multiplatform savvy had helped give Ukraine a preventing probability in opposition to the Kremlin’s large military and disinformation juggernaut.
Zelensky was a comic and actor earlier than he entered politics, parlaying his troupe, Kvartal 95, right into a manufacturing firm. In 2015, he starred in a success tv collection referred to as “Servant of the Folks” — now the title of his political occasion — a few historical past instructor who turned president after a video of him ranting in opposition to corrupt politicians went viral. Zelensky introduced his marketing campaign for president whereas the present was nonetheless on the air.
Volodymyr Zelensky throughout his 2019 marketing campaign for president.
(AFP/Getty Photos)
Initially disregarded by Ukraine’s political elite, he ran an lively marketing campaign, crowdsourcing questions on social media to ask his opponent throughout debates, and gained with 73% of the vote. In his victory speech, he poked at Putin, whose forces 5 years earlier had seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine, and who has remained in energy for many years because of Kremlin-controlled elections.
“To all of the residents of post-Soviet international locations: Have a look at us,” Zelensky mentioned. “Every little thing is feasible.”
Zelensky’s recognition tumbled a bit after that, with critics knocking his incapacity to rein within the nation’s oligarchs and a collection of populist decrees that had been extra present than substance. Then there was his failed makes an attempt at making peace with Putin, a frontrunner accustomed to spy video games, media purges and energy performs, who noticed a West-leaning continent and upstarts like Zelensky as a threats to his dream of resurrecting Russia’s glory.
A Ukrainian soldier in a front-line place in December in Marinka, Ukraine.
(Brendan Hoffman / Getty Photos)
As a attainable battle with Moscow loomed in current months, many Ukrainians questioned whether or not Zelensky had the metal nerves a wartime president wanted to maintain the nation collectively in opposition to the formidable Russian pressure — as many as 190,000 troops and a land, sea and air arsenal — assembled like a noose round Ukraine. That feeling was strengthened when Zelensky saved downplaying the growing chance of a Russian invasion at the same time as Western leaders continued to sound the alarm.
However within the 4 days since Russia invaded, Zelensky has shone, mentioned Illia Ponomarenko, a Ukrainian journalist with the Kyiv Impartial newspaper.
“It’s not that I’m now an unconditional nice fan of his, however he did shock me, in an ideal method,” she mentioned.
Earlier than, Ponomarenko would inform those that Zelensky beloved the title “president” however not the laborious work the workplace required. However the warfare, she mentioned, “has lastly triggered the most effective a part of him.”
It’s that a part of him, many agree, that has appeared each day — and sometimes a number of occasions a day — briefly movies on the Telegram messaging app. Like many different Ukrainians continuously on edge from the nightly missiles and explosions above the capital, Kyiv, Zelensky emerges onscreen trying red-eyed and unshaven in an army-green T-shirt.
“We’re all right here,” he mentioned in a single video alongside three high advisors in entrance of his workplace constructing to dispel rumors he was fleeing. ”We’re in Kyiv. We’re defending Ukraine.”
Law enforcement officials stand guard at a constructing bombed by shells in Kyiv, Ukraine.
(Genya Savilov / AFP-Getty Photos)
“Now we have obtained a real wartime chief who does simply all the pieces proper,” Ponomarenko mentioned. “It simply blows my thoughts to see him being so encouraging and powerful, staying within the metropolis in its worst nightmare it doesn’t matter what.”
Putin, then again, has at occasions evoked the air of a indifferent and scowling villain in a John le Carre novel. In current days, he has appeared remoted, a person sitting alone in gilded rooms whereas his subordinates linger like extras within the wings.
An intelligence agent who recruited spies in East Germany throughout the Chilly Conflict, Putin was handpicked out of relative obscurity in 1999 by then-President Boris Yeltsin to develop into prime minister.
At first, Putin, a judo knowledgeable who has not been shy about being photographed bare-chested, appeared inquisitive about bringing Russia nearer to the West. He aligned with the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults, and mentioned he believed the Baltic nations ought to be part of the North Atlantic Treaty Group in the event that they needed. However after a number of years, he reversed course.
To counter what he sees as NATO’s growth into Russia’s sphere of affect, Putin has waged a warfare with Georgia and annexed Crimea, and seems to be on a messianic mission to avenge what he sees as the nice injustice of the Soviet Union’s 1991 demise.
Because the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Putin has come off as much more centered on righting what he views are these historic wrongs. That was strikingly obvious in his televised tackle on the eve of the incursion into Ukraine: Talking with a quiet however barely contained rage, he delivered an virtually hourlong exegesis on why Ukraine wasn’t even a rustic.
Within the days after, he has vowed that any occasion making an attempt to impede or “create threats for our nation and its individuals should know that the Russian response shall be instant and provoke penalties you’ve gotten by no means seen in historical past.”
And in contrast to Zelensky, it’s unclear whether or not the Russian public is behind him.
The federal government has restricted what state-run media can say in regards to the battle, throttled social media and banned broadcasters from utilizing the phrases “warfare” and “invasion” (they describe it because the “particular navy operation”).
Law enforcement officials detain a protester in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Friday.
(Dmitri Lovetsky / Related Press)
On the identical time, broadcasters have maintained a gentle stream of protection of what Putin describes because the genocide dealing with ethnic Russians residing in Ukraine’s japanese provinces. However all that hasn’t stopped antiwar protests from erupting in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Worse, the choice to invade might have punctured Putin’s long-held picture of a calculating grasp strategist. Many Russians are shocked Putin invaded in any respect, and as world opprobrium singes the nation’s hyperlinks to the Western world, they fear the battle is popping their nation right into a pariah — and concern Putin is keen to begin a nuclear battle to resolve it.
Maybe nowhere was the distinction between the 2 extra vivid than in Zelensky’s enchantment to the Russian individuals within the hours earlier than the invasion. He spoke in Russian, his first language rising up within the central Ukrainian metropolis of Kryvyi Rih.
“I do know that they [the Russian government] gained’t present my tackle on Russian TV, however Russian individuals need to see it. They should know the reality, and the reality is that it’s time to cease now, earlier than it’s too late,” he mentioned.
“And if the Russian leaders don’t need to sit with us behind the desk for the sake of peace, possibly they’ll sit behind the desk with you.”
The following day, Putin dispatched his military towards Kyiv.
Linthicum reported from Mexico Metropolis and Bulos from Kyiv.
