Zelenskyy was, in Ukraine, easily the best recognizable comedian
and the most successful one.
And the project that was his flagship thing, was a regular comedy show.
It was not what you would call highbrow humor.
There was quite a lot of kind of primitive humor, I would say.
And quite a lot of sophisticated making fun of politics.
He would just do these really funny and clever takedowns of
Ukrainian politicians, Russian politicians, you know,
because it is in many ways, a shared cultural and political space.
Servant of the People is a good show.
It's really funny.
It’s about a history teacher who's sort of thrust into the presidency
because of a video of him that goes viral.
This is your ultimate, like a regular person suddenly gets power all over the country.
And his heart in the right place but everything is against him.
There's corruption everywhere.
And he's — he just wants to change the country.
He almost, like, showed on the screen what kind of president he would be.
And I think that was his basically campaign manifesto.
He's basically asking people to submit the five main problems that they see in Ukraine.
You could call it like a crowdsourced political program.
His whole campaign was a number of videos like that, where
instead of doing a professional video which he easily could have done
he was doing this little selfie clips.
It works really well for his image of nontraditional, anti-establishment guy.
He was keeping his program pretty vague and empty.
And it worked.
His victory speech — he said, I am, the hope for change
not just for people in Ukraine but for all people
hinting obviously on Russia.
I still think that Putin holds a big grudge on this.
Nobody knows what Putin thought.
Probably in all likelihood the leadership of Russia was thinking that he’s inexperienced,
he’s new.
This is our chance.
It's my hypothesis that he was looking at Zelenskyy
as a very easy partner, who can be played.
It's eerie to me to watch it now, to be honest.
"I think that there's a high chance of ending the war."
"When?"
"As soon as possible."
"I want to believe that it will be this year."
The presidency was defined by a pretty consistent and precipitous decline in popularity.
We're talking about ratings of 30s even down to like 20s.
It was connected to several issues.
There was no progress in peace.
There were implications of his company listed in the Pandora Papers.
He was trying to accumulate more power in the office of the president
which Ukrainians despise.
He started cracking down on opposition.
He was changing tremendously and he was becoming a strongman.
People saw him slipping towards the usual way of doing business in Ukraine.
A lot of Ukrainians were not seeing it as a successful presidency.
What is happening in that clip is that he is holding a press conference
for foreign media.
Zelenskyy was trying to downplay the threat, but also putting out some confusing messages.
These expectations of the war
they forced many investors to leave Ukraine.
And, of course, for President Zelenskyy it was unacceptable.
In the weeks that led up to the crisis, from the communication point of view
I don't think that he did a very good job.
At the outbreak of war, there was fear and there was a suspicion that he may
you know, capitulate, he will concede, he'll get scared.
That clip was perceived that the captain is not abandoning the ship.
From that moment, people understood he's not surrendering.
And there are millions of Ukrainians who are ready to put up that fight.
Yes, yes, it definitely was a turning point.
If you watch a clip of Zelenskyy talking, for example
to the Western press in January again
and this clip of Zelenskyy standing in the street of Kyiv
you can think that these are two different people.
But if you compare this clip with Zelenskyy of 2019
when he was campaigning for president
that's the same person.
In terms of style, in terms of how, you know, sincere and open he is
it's like we made a full circle.
We came back to the 2019 Zelenskyy, which is the guy people voted for.
His speech to the European Parliament.
It was really striking.
As it was translated for the members of the European Parliament you hear the translator
fighting back tears as he's translating Zelenskyy's words.
I've never heard that happen.
"We are fighting."
"Just for our land and for our freedom...
despite the fact that all our citizens of our country are now blocked..."
The moment was so emotional and raw.
I think it really helped to change a lot of minds in Europe.
They have to understand that for Ukraine, it's their battle for existence.
His message is also if we stop Putin at the Ukrainian border, everybody will be safer.
His appeals to Europe, have been very much impactful
and really making it morally and politically impossible for them
to stay on the sidelines and not support Ukraine.
Today, his background as somebody who
was working with the audience his whole life is coming in handy.
He definitely knows how to command the audience, how to grasp their attention
how to how to put on a show, so to say.
He probably wasn't the best president in peacetime.
But he was very good in the beginning of the war, creating hope, uniting the nation
and giving an impetus for resistance.
He is not the president anymore.
He's the leader of the nation.
I know because I asked people in Ukraine, they find it convincing.
To stay in the capital, in Kyiv
that's really inspiring for a lot of people in the country to see.
I think it shouldn't be forgotten that
there are thousands of regular Ukrainians who are demonstrating
even bigger bravery every day.
Unarmed civilians trying to stop tanks with their bare hands.
This spirit of regular Ukrainians is what's inspiring Zelenskyy too.
He's proven worthy of the nation he’s leading.