It was the day after the entry of Russian forces into Ukrainian territory last February.
To the offer that the United States government had just made to him to ensure his safe evacuation from the capital, kyiv, Volodymyr Zelensky would then have replied: “The fight is here: I need ammunition, not a car ride. »
The declaration had everything to mark the spirits, which it did, starting by infiltrating popular culture in the first days of the war of invasion launched by Russia against Ukraine, to end the year at the top of the 10 Most Outstanding Quotes of 2022 established by the New Yale Book of Quotations.
One more consecration for the Ukrainian president, named personality of the year by the magazine Timeat the beginning of December, for having imposed its mark and its spirit, in spite of itself, on the year which is ending.
“On February 24, a new Zelensky was born, summed up in an interview with Homework his biographer, Sergii Rudenko. He became the central figure of the Ukrainian resistance, of the courage of the Ukrainian people fighting for their freedom and their independence”, continues the Ukrainian journalist, author of Zelensky: A Biography (Polity Press — not translated into French), reached in kyiv a few days ago.
The role was far from having been written in advance for this improbable head of state who arrived at the top of the former Soviet republic in 2019 via the atypical path of humor and the small screen. It was through this that he became known to Ukrainians, and then to the whole world, especially through the popular television series called Sluha Narodu (Servant of the people), resumed on Netflix. He played a history professor offended by the corruption in his country and who, by a succession of events, ended up becoming president of Ukraine. You can not make that up.
However, coming out of fiction, his character was above all caught up in reality, which first forced the actor to face Donald Trump’s intimidation attempts. The populist hoped to obtain harmful information about his political rival Joe Biden from Zelensky, in exchange for funding for the Ukrainian army. The drama over, the new president found himself faced with a health crisis, then with the aggression of Vladimir Putin, who placed him before the role of his life: that of warlord, which very few believed that he would be up to it.
“Volodymyr Zelensky was not well prepared for the position he occupies, said then in an interview with the Homework Quebec historian of Ukrainian origin Roman Serbyn, on the eve of the war. Of course, he is not alone in governing. But under the circumstances, another person would have been better to deal with this crisis. »
The story placed the scenario on another narrative frame…
“Zelensky has not changed his image in 2022, he has simply won the confidence of Ukrainians as president,” said Sergii Rudenko. In the hardest times, when Kyiv was threatened with collapse and dozens of elite units in the pay of the Kremlin tried to break into the president’s office to end his life, he remained in his residence in the center of the Ukrainian capital and people appreciated. kyiv’s new strongman survived more than a dozen murder attempts in the first three weeks of the conflict.
“He had never served in the army, did not know how to fight, but he learned it fairly quickly, continues his biographer. He also learned to speak frankly to the West, sometimes in a very undiplomatic way. By recounting and understanding the daily life of millions of Ukrainians, he has established himself, through his speeches and his actions, as the leader of his people, but more broadly as the leader of the free world, representing courage in the face of pure evil. ”, embodied by Russia.
Since the start of the war, the Ukrainian president has been everywhere, both in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world, using videoconferencing, the format of choice for this former television series producer who has thus been able to carry his word. as much in front of the UN and NATO as in front of the audience of the Grammy Awards. This week he stepped out of his country for the first time to address the US Congress in person, as Churchill did in 1941, when the free world was also then threatened by totalitarianism and the ‘horror.
Each time, he proved that “courage can be as contagious as fear” and “reminded the world of the fragility of democracy — and peace,” wrote the editor of the Time, Edward Felsenthal, to talk about a character that 2022 made larger than life. And who is now waiting for his victory over the Russian bear not to make his entry into history, but above all to confirm that, against all odds, he has already found his place there.