Since the beginning of his mandate in 2019, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has probably sometimes been bored with his old life: that of an actor-comedian who, in the popular television series entitled Sluha Narodu (servant of the people), played the role of a history teacher becoming the unlikely president of Ukraine. Faced with a single threat, endemic corruption in his country, he will oppose it with his refreshing naivety. He is now facing a war.
A sympathetic fiction, the series propelled him, to everyone’s surprise, to the top of the state, where the scenario of reality once again catches up with the ex-actor.
After suffering an intimidation attempt led by Donald Trump, who hoped to obtain harmful information about his political rival Joe Biden from Zelensky, then being placed in spite of himself at the heart of the dismissal procedure of the former American president for this same case, he must now deal with the ongoing invasion of his country by a Russia determined to bring the former Soviet republic under the yoke of Moscow. By force, intimidation and disinformation.
And the violence of the scenario inevitably comes to upset the plans and the image of the politician whose electoral program, supported by his televisual popularity, rested on two pillars: the negotiation of a peace in Donbass, region in the east under Russian influence whose independence Vladimir Putin savagely recognized this week, and the fight against corruption, which is still utopian.
According to the latest report from Transparency International, Ukraine is still the third most corrupt country in Europe, behind Russia and Azerbaijan.
“Volodymyr Zelensky was not well prepared for the position he occupies,” Quebec historian of Ukrainian origin Roman Serbyn dropped on the phone. Of course, he is not alone in governing. But under the circumstances, another person would have been better to deal with this crisis. »
“His opponents had announced a disaster because of his inexperience, recalled this week Olga Rudenko, editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Independentin the pages of New York Times. Yet the truth is more prosaic. Mr. Zelensky, the showman and performer, was unmasked by reality. And it revealed him in disheartening mediocrity. »
Deceptive amateurism
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rebellion against Ukraine and the West thus replays, with even more contempt, the 2014 film in which Moscow seized Crimea, and certainly comes to feed the bitter criticism targeting the Ukrainian president. A criticism which, just like the outcome of the current crisis in this region, cannot yet be qualified as definitive, believes Dominique Arel, holder of the Chair in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa.
“Volodymyr Zelensky does not shy away from taking steps that go off the beaten track or making statements that give the impression of a certain amateurism,” he said in an interview with the Homework. “But at the moment he is playing his cards very well and doing quite well. »
Faced with the prospect of a brutal invasion apprehended by the United States, the Ukrainian president issued a disturbing call for calm and waited weeks before mobilizing the reserves – which he did only on Wednesday – and this, while that the sound of boots was increasingly heard at its border.
In the midst of the crisis, he also did not hesitate to publicly castigate a few allies, including the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, seen by Germany as a simple energy link with Russia, but used by Moscow, according to the Ukrainian president, as a “geopolitical weapon” threatening the diplomatic talks of recent weeks.
On Tuesday, Berlin announced that it had put this project on ice, in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine.
“Very seasoned politicians can crash in times of crisis,” says Mr. Arel. But Zelensky is resisting the pressure very well, which is very strong at the moment. »
His speech last Saturday at the security conference in Munich, Germany confirmed the trend. In front of the West, the ex-comedian strongly called on his allies to put an end to their policy of appeasement in relation to Moscow and to defend his country, which had become a “shield of Europe” against the threat of an invasion. Russian. A call heard, including by Poland and Hungary, two countries yet very close to Russia, and which on Tuesday joined the concert of nations having announced sanctions against Moscow.
“Zelensky wanted peace and thought he could talk as equals with Putin, but that didn’t happen,” said political scientist Lubomyr Luciuk of the Royal Military College of Canada. But he is in the process of redefining his character to become more of Ukraine’s warlord who brings with him the sincerity, decency and patriotism that brought him to power. “A role not easy to play against a” tyrant who very effectively undermines geopolitical structures “, he continues, but that Zelensky ultimately handles with some efficiency.
A sharp sobriety
“He has a calm and sober tone in front of Putin, whose statement on Monday was blood-curdling,” said Mr. Arel. He obtained the unity of Westerners against Russia. In Ukraine, he gained a political consensus in favor of preserving the integrity of Ukraine, with the support of the oligarchs. And that’s already a lot. »
Many, yes, in a necessarily unbalanced balance of power with Russia, which, unlike 2014, now holds Ukraine in a vice from the north, east and south, with its armies massed in Belarus, including the illegitimate regime is indebted to the Kremlin, in the puppet “republics” of the Donbass as well as on the Black Sea, where the line of defense of Ukraine remains very weak.
“But after eight years, Ukraine also has a stronger army, with soldiers who have experience in war”, explains Mr. Arel while admitting that a war in this region is destined “to be catastrophic for everyone”. “The Russian army remains very strong. But in times of war, those who are in a weak position may have other assets, such as enthusiasm, guerrilla warfare, mobilization, the support of their allies… which may influence the level of resistance”, and create the surprise.
Like a history professor becoming president in a fiction, or an actor bringing the imagination of his series to the reality of a presidency now placed at the heart of a major crisis, and who, under the Zelensky effect, can still give hope for the unexpected.