I don’t know about you but the first thing I do upon waking is to check Volodymyr Zelensky’s Twitter feed hoping against hope that he is still alive. I really hope that by the time this piece appears in these pages, I would still be checking it or, better, I really hope that I would be reading about Vladimir Putin’s ousting or, even better, I really hope I would be reading his obituary drenched with the blood of his victims.
Hope.
This word has been used so much lately by politicians of every stripe, some fraudulently, that it has become hollow. But Zelensky restored its meaning. Not since Winston Churchill have the words of one leader electrified an entire continent.
Putin has done the unthinkable. He has united Europe. About time, too, for, in the past, notably in Georgia, in Chechnya, in Syria and in Crimea, the Salisbury poisonings, Russian aggression has always been met with complacency and incoherence.
It was very fitting that the Ukrainian president quoted the British wartime leader during his unprecedented address to the House of Commons earlier this month. For many across the world, Zelensky has been transformed into the de facto leader of the free world.
Much has already been said about Zelensky’s former career of actor, comedian, voice-over artist and winner of Ukraine’s version of Strictly Come Dancing. It’s not important now what he was but what he has become. An inspirational wartime leader.
Zelensky reminded us what political courage looks like and what true freedom means: a readiness to fight and die to prevent your country from being subjugated to tyranny. And many in the West had forgotten what courage looked like in politicians.
When the history books are written about Putin’s brutal war on civilians, one quote will stand out. When the US offered to spirit Zelensky out of Ukraine to safety, his reply, “I need ammunition, not a ride”, encapsulated the spirit of the nation that trickled down to the people.
We all saw the clip from the small Snake Island of Ukrainian border soldiers telling the Russian warship to ‘F*** yourself’, or the old lady giving sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers so that, when they die, flowers will grow where they fell.
Or the Ukrainian farmers towing massive Russian tanks with their tractors, thus becoming ‘the fifth largest military force in Europe’ as the joke on the internet goes.
Or Ukrainian people, young and old together, preparing Molotov cocktails as a communitarian effort. Because, just as we used to think that it takes a village to raise a child, we are learning that it also takes a people to save a nation.
By not fleeing the country, by his heroic leadership, Zelensky has shown his people who they want to be and, then, by watching his people, we, Europeans, were reminded of who we used to be before decades of complacency and Ostpolitik eroded our sense of purpose, our sense of self, our place in the world. With Zelensky, we realised that we’ve been taken in by the braggadocio of false heroes, by the lure of corrupt Russian filthy lucre that flows in every European capital.
Vladimir Putin has done the unthinkable. He has united Europe- Alessandra Dee Crespo
Zelensky’s heroism has also inspired a Russian TV editor, Marina Ovsyannikova, to denounce Kremlin’s lies on a live news broadcast of a state-controlled station. She risked spending up to 15 years in jail for spreading ‘fake news’. Remember her name.
Every day, we feverishly check our news and hope that in this Manichean existential struggle of good versus evil, the good will prevail. Even the more optimistic of us know that, although the astonishing tale of Zelensky and his people is one of heroes, this is not a superhero movie where the hero always wins. There is a danger that evil will win if the West forgets its Churchillian legacy embodied so ably in a 44-year-old Gen Xer.
It is not accidental that Zelensky also quoted Hamlet to the House of Commons. “To be or not to be,” mused Zelensky. Make no mistake, this war is not only about the survival of one nation but of an entire continent or, rather, the survival of democracy itself.
Hope, they say, is the last to die.
What is hope really, in concrete terms? What is hope to the Ukrainian fighter, both the professional army and the civilian fighters who chose to stay? I can quote from various famous people but the best answer to my question has been given by an 11-year-old Ukrainian boy from Zaporizhzhia who travelled 700 miles alone to Slovakia carrying only a backpack, a plastic bag, a passport and a phone number scribbled on his hand. When asked by journalists what helped him on this lonely trek, the boy replied: “My hope carried me on the journey.”
“To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”
These are not Zelensky’s words. But those of another comedian in The Great Dictator.
As a former comedian, I hope against hope that Zelensky has the last laugh. But at what price?