What Zelinskky means right now to his country cannot be
overstated. Who is he this hour, we speak with people
who know him, who have worked with him to get an
understanding of what makes him Ukraine's fighter in
chief. James Packard begins our special report.
Vladimir Zelenskyy is a new star for the international
community, but for Ukrainians their made on tv
president has always been front and center. You know
when I met him, he He was so full of energy and full of
ideas all the time. A lawyer by training and comic by
trade. Zelenskyy carved out his place in Ukrainian
Entertainment in the early 2000s, competing in comedy
contests and producing TV shows Before he was 30. It
wasn't just luck propelling this small town outsider to
center stage in Ukrainian media, there was something
about his energy, his timing, his ability to pierce
through the screen and grab hold of an audience picking
him up like that. We can do like this, we can do that,
that let's do that, that it was really, really a lot of
fun to meet him to work with him. I must say he was, he
is very, very creative person. Movies followed and wit
enough star power, he started his own production
company. But it was a satirical political comedy th
would change his life most dramatically. The story of a
history teacher unwittingly thrust into the Ukrainian
presidency became his real world when his characters
rants on political corruption spilled out of the T.V.
And into real life. The comedy was in the clash between
the expectations from the corrupt society, how he
should behave and this ordinary man in 2019 Zelenskyy
became Ukraine's president Ousting Petro Poroshenko. He
wrote on the popularity of the TV show and then he got
73% of the vote. It was a landslide victory in the
elections. From the start his tenure was destined for
headlines. TV president becomes real life one. But what
ended up making him known to the rest of the world is
much more significant than that. Article one is adopted
first finding himself tangled in the web of a
questionable phone call with the american president and
a remark that would lead to donald trump's first
impeachment. Then it was growing tension with his
neighboring country, a conflict already broken out in a
war he had pledged to end but found difficult to
deescalate. If you'd asked me about President Zelenskyy
last year, I I had kind of mixed views on him. I mean I
I there were some things he was doing well but but I
thought that he was falling short when it came to terms
of some of the critical reforms that had to be made in
Ukraine really dealing with corruption and dealing with
some of the oligarchs and now with the pariah of the
west blazing rockets and tanks into the heart of his
country. Volodymyr Zelenskyy fi himself where no world
leader wants to be at the intersection of the gravest
threat to global stability since World War two, you
feel so much for him and he could be dead tomorrow.
Raised in a Russian speaking town, part of a Jewish
family and grandson to the only of four brothers to
survive the holocaust. He is perhaps at the human
intersection of the Russian roots and Jewish minority
that has come to define Vladimir Putin's twisted
pretext for war. A denazificati
for a man who has a Jewish leader, one of the few
outside Israel at the top of his hit list. They do not
know these streets, they do not know our people do not
understand our philosophy, our aspirations, what type
of people we are. They don't know anything here. They
were just sent here to fight and to die despite the
threat of assassination. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has daringl
stood guard in the abandoned streets of his own capital,
refused offers to leave and pleaded with his
constituents in a flood of selfie videos and tweets to
defend their home. I mean here he is with his black
jacket on out, having morning tea with the soldiers in
Kiev and he said, I'm going to stay and keep it is the
kind of effective communication the kind of piercing
human connection that made him a star to begin with and
now has the power to move. Even the most stoic of
observers to world events were fighting just for our
land and for our freedom observers say it may just be
the secret ingredient to ward off Russia. But even if
Russia succeeds, Zelenskyy has already proven that as
life imitates art so too can art propel a nation to
rally its courage and source. It's hope from one man,
an artist staring down the barrel of 1000 guns to
defend truth and democracy, and he's such a hero, I
must say. I'm full of admiration for him what he's
doing now. I don't think every, you know, every man
would do the same, Los Angeles.