Zelensky’s Finest Hour

If you haven’t already, take nine minutes to watch the English subtitled version of the speech that Volodymyr Zelensky gave on the eve of the Russian invasion, which was broadcast in Ukraine and aimed at audiences both domestic and foreign, but addressed to the Russian people. It is worth your time. It is everything you could ask from a man whose country is against the wall: emotional, determined, and specifically evocative rather than windy and general. Zelensky, as you may recall, had the most surreal preparation possible for this job: He got elected on the strength of having played the Ukrainian president in a TV comedy. His rise reflected, among other things, popular cynicism about the grubby dysfunction of the Ukrainian system, and Zelensky in office has not exactly been an ideal Western-style democrat himself. He became the center of the storm of American partisan politics when Democrats impeached Donald Trump for the “perfect phone call” in which Trump leaned on him to get dirt on Joe Biden. Now, he faces a much graver threat closer to home. Political leadership — and on some level, all forms of adult responsibility — involves a certain level of “Fake it ’till you make it”: In time, we become who we pretend to be. Ronald Reagan illustrated, in the American context, the power of an acting background in the president’s ability to communicate. Here, Zelensky puts all of that on the line. One way you can tell we’re in 2022 is his plea to ordinary Russians such as “TikTokers” to weigh in against war — in the hopes that the TikTokers of Moscow might play a role as unexpected as the taxicabs of Paris did in 1914. Godspeed to Zelensky and his nation in this hour of need.