I knew Zelensky had guts because he stood up to Donald Trump when he attempted to blackmail Ukraine into sabotaging Joe Biden’s campaign for him. But this is something else again.
Apparently, President Zelensky told the heads of the European Union on the phone last night that it may be the last time they see him alive. I can’t imagine that kind of responsibility — and fear.
Josh Marshall wrote a twitter thread about him that I thought was quite compelling:
There must have been many moments over the last few weeks when Zelensky said to himself, “How the fuck did I get here?” As most of you know, Zelensky was a comedian and actor. Sort of a lark candidacy. I believe he actually owed a lot of his fame to a show in which he played a President of Ukraine. Not certain I remember that right but I think so. It seems almost unimaginable that he could have had any idea it would come to quite this.
And yet now he’s in a position in which he will either preside over the dissolution of the independent Ukrainian state or, if things go very differently, probably be regarded as something like a founding father of it.
Through the last few weeks I’ve heard lots of commentary from public sources or just region experts in convo saying the guy is just hopelessly in over his head. And I don’t know enough about the precise negotiations or internal Ukrainian state stuff to know whether that’s true or not. But history often lives or dies in key, clutch moments. And I must say the recent speeches barreling into war … they’ve shown a moral courage that is very hard to second guess. And let’s be frank, there’s something between a non-trivial and very good likelihood he will not physically survive this conflict.
And yet, there he is. Not running. It’s hard not to compare it – though the facts are very very different to the last President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, who got the fuck outta dodge at the first hint things were going south. Very very few of us will ever face a situation with such a combination of historic consequence and physical danger.
But many of us face moments where we must choose to face fear and live out our promises or run. And you have to say this guy is really passing that test. And though the resistance we’re seeing is definitely one that involves millions of Ukrainians I have to imagine that a rapid collapse or evacuation of state or its leadership would have been a gut punch to the morale we’re seeing standing in defiance today.
Originally tweeted by Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) on February 25, 2022.
Vladimir Putin calls him a Nazi. He is Jewish.
He is a brave leader.