"According to our information, the enemy has listed me as target number one, and my family
as target number two.
They want to destroy the country politically, terminating the head of state."
Desperate words from the Ukrainian president on the day after Russia invaded his country.
Desperate words from a man who, only a couple of years ago, played the piano on TV with
his trousers around his ankles …and without using his hands.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has undergone an extraordinary transformation
…from an entertainer dancing in high heels
…to a wartime leader in green khaki t-shirts.
Zelenskyy's regular selfie-style addresses have won him the eyes and ears, as well as
the hearts, of many at home and abroad.
He has also received standing ovations from politicians around the world.
Many say that much of his remarkable success in leading his country against Russia’s
invasion stems from what he says and how he says it.
But how exactly does Zelenskyy communicate?
Let’s take a closer look.
The skills that are required of playing a president are kind of the skills required
for the public presentation of a presidency.
It’s now a well-known fact that, before becoming the president of Ukraine, Zelenskyy
spent a career in show business.
He won Ukraine’s version of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ back in 2006
…and was the Ukrainian voice behind “Paddington Bear”.
Zelenskyy went on to star in the satirical TV show ‘Servant of the People’
where he played a high-school teacher who is unexpectedly elected President of Ukraine.
I'm convinced that his experience as an actor is definitely an asset for him.
The ability to have presence, the ability to remember lines, to read a speech without
it being clear that you are reading, all of those things from Zelenskyy's prior background
as an actor come into very good use as the leader of Ukraine.
… abilities that seem more relevant than ever in the age of digital mass communication.
That’s probably what you need.
You need to be informal, you need to be memeworthy.
“We are all here.
Our citizens are here, our soldiers are here and we are here.”
Defiant words from Zelenskyy, standing surrounded by members of his cabinet, after rumors occurred
he had fled the country.
A 32-second selfie-style video, filmed in the streets of Kyiv – and perfect for going
viral.
What he does with that video is he has all the tropes that you need to be successful
in the social media age.
It's short, it's informal, it's colloquial.
That's something that they've always been effective at.
That's why Zelenskyy is the president of Ukraine – because they were effective in communicating
to young Ukrainians through precisely these types of social media outlets.
Zelenskyy led an unorthodox presidential campaign in 2019,
drawing on his fame as an actor.
He gave few interviews and instead relied on social media.
Literally, within a few months, they had set up a campaign based around social media using
Instagram instead of Twitter, for instance.
Twitter was something they thought was for political nerds and journalists.
Instagram was the media to reach ordinary people who weren't very political and weren't
following the news in much detail.
The strategy proved successful, resulting in an unexpected landslide victory.
But he failed to deliver on one of his main campaign promises – to end the conflict
in eastern Ukraine.
And then there were the Pandora Papers.
The investigative report, conducted by an international network of journalists, revealed
that Zelenskyy had ties to offshore companies.
That didn’t go down well with Ukrainians given that he had vowed to end corruption.
His approval ratings were rock bottom before Russia invaded.
But since then, public support for Zelenskyy has soared to over 90%.
Even people who were definitely his political opponents before that are giving him recognition
for what he's achieved in terms of the communication within the country, in terms of his decision
not to leave Kyiv when it seemed in those early days that Russia would roll into Kyiv
within a matter of days when he told the Americans that he needed ammunition and not a ride.
“‘To be or not to be.'
You know this is a Shakespearian question.”
“Remember Pearl Harbor, that terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black
from the planes attacking you.”
“Chancellor Scholz, tear down this wall.”
Since the start of the war, Zelenskyy has been on a virtual world tour,
making his plea for support in front of various parliaments,
repeating the same message over and over again – but each time customized for his audience.
When he is addressing a foreign parliament, he has been primed on the sort of the key
elements of national history that he should touch upon that will lead his listeners to
identify with the Ukrainian cause in this particular moment.
And his listeners do seem to identify with the Ukrainian cause…
Germany for instance reversed decades of foreign policy and agreed to send weapons to Ukraine.
However, one of Zelenskyy’s demands to foreign leaders hasn’t been met – his call to
establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Some say that, maybe, Zelenskyy is deliberately asking for more than he expects to gain – a
strategic communication maneuver.
I think he knows that if NATO was actually fighting in Ukraine, it would start a third
world war.
But nevertheless, he asked, for example, for no-fly zones in Ukraine to avoid Russian bombardments.
And in the US, Congress could not offer him that.
But they decided to send more anti-aircraft bombs.
And apart from Ukrainians at home and leaders abroad, Zelenskyy clearly has another target
audience in mind…
“I want to address today the people of Russia.
I am addressing you not as a president, I am addressing you as a citizen of Ukraine.”
Zelenskyy speaking on the eve of the Russian invasion,
setting himself apart from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He's certainly the antithesis to Putin in terms of his communication strategy.
So Putin has been giving hour-long lectures about obscure aspects of Russian and Ukrainian
history.
[...] Zelenskyy has been able to do these shorter attention-grabbing and spreadable
ideas, much more so than Putin has.
And it is not just his communication strategy that makes Zelenskyy a counterpoint to Putin.
The Russian president is known for projecting a kind of hypermasculinity.
The word macho is almost perfectly positioned to describe Putin because he is very keen
to present himself as shirtless, on horseback and as an excellent athlete, succeeding at
having power over other people through the use of his body.
Zelenskyy is not concerned with those things, and it would be tempting to say that this
is post-masculinity.
But in fact I think it's just a different kind of way of being a man in the world, one
that is not quite so concerned about maintaining its dignity and its status as man all the
time.
Zelenskyy has been presenting himself as unshaven, exhausted, vulnerable – but determined nonetheless.
We look at him and we see someone who is an ordinary person who's been called upon to
do something extraordinary.
And that, to many of us, feels heroic.
So he is, in an odd sense, heroic precisely because he's not a natural born hero.
From entertainer to wartime leader – Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been delivering a compelling
performance in a role he probably never wanted to play.