Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” on Wednesday. The former actor and comedian who decided to stay in Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his so-called ‘military operation’ has been lauded for his courage.
The Time magazine’s editor in chief Edward Felsenthal wrote: “Volodymyr Zelensky galvanised the world in a way we haven’t seen in decades. In the weeks after Russian bombs began falling on February 24, his decision not to flee Kyiv but to stay and rally support was fateful. From his first 40-second Instagram post on Feb. 25—showing that his Cabinet and civil society were intact and in place—to daily speeches delivered remotely to the likes of houses of Parliament, the World Bank, and the Grammy Awards, Ukraine’s President was everywhere. His information offensive shifted the geopolitical weather system, setting off a wave of action that swept the globe.”
Zelensky dealt another blow to the ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin when he travelled to Sloviansk, a town not very far from Bakhmut, which is part of eastern Donetsk, which Russia annexed and claimed as its own in September.
The Time magazine’s profile on the Ukrainian President said that Zelensky’s success as a wartime leader shows that courage is contagious.
The profile written by Time magazine’s Simon Shuster pointed out that Ukraine’s political leadership felt encouraged when they realised that Zelensky stuck around.
He also drew a difference between Zelensky and former President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, who fled during the Taliban takeover and also compared him with his predecessor Viktor Yanukovych, who ran away from Kyiv as protesters demanded his removal and continues to remain in Moscow.
Schuster also pointed out that to survive the German Wehrmacht, leaders of Albania, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Yugoslavia, among others, fled their countries and lived out the war in exile during the second World War.
The profile also shows that Zelensky knew he had no military expertise, hence, he left the fighting to its generals but he did what his days as an actor and comedian trained him to do: convince the world that Ukraine needed to win the war.
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