A key reason Putin’s bloody invasion is faltering? He’s no match for Zelenskiy’s iPhone
The leader’s messages to his people – and the west - have been central to the heroic fightback. But now more than ever, we must stay engaged
". . .Note the present tense. There is nothing former about Zelenskiy and his colleagues’ vocation: they’re still producers now. Indeed, there is scarcely a gap between Zelenskiy’s two incarnations as politician and performer. His most famous hit show was called Servant of the People; his political party is called Servant of the People. . .
In David Hare’s new play Straight Line Crazy, the urban planner Robert Moses is hailed in the 1920s as “a new kind of man … the man who believes that the way you’re written about is as important as what you do”. But Zelenskiy has taken it to a new level, not least because he has adapted everything he learned from conventional TV to the idiom of social media.
He understands that in the new era, the war leader does not stand besuited at a podium, declaiming a speech packed with rhetorical flourish. Instead, Zelenskiy’s message is that he is a servant of the people because he is one of the people, no different from any of them. In his trademark short videos, he wears military olive-green, but it’s not a formal uniform, still less the ceremonial getup of a head of state. He wears exactly what a civilian volunteer would wear.
The locations are chosen just as deliberately. If he’s not at a simple desk in a plain office, he’s just outside the presidential palace, with landmarks Ukrainians would recognise visibly in shot. As David Patrikarakos, whose book, War in 140 Characters, was among the first to identify the changing face of battle in the age of Twitter, tells me: “In those videos, Zelenskiy is literally the man in the street.” Together with a knack for demotic, unflowery soundbites – “I need ammunition, not a ride” – he has become a master of what Patrikarakos calls “digital statesmanship”. He’s Churchill with an iPhone. . .
And yet, there are limits to Kyiv’s success in the messaging wars. For one thing, while it has made the Ukrainian president a hero in the west, it is not penetrating elsewhere. It was notable that the 35 countries that abstained on this month’s UN resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion account for half the world’s population. Zelenskiy is a hit in Paris and Berlin; in Beijing and Delhi, not so much. . .
Social media in particular crave novelty. Once the initial shock of footage of bombed-out buildings or distraught victims wears off, Ukraine could recede from the public mind.
Perhaps mindful of that danger, Zelenskiy has been careful to offer variety. In his rolling series of video link addresses to the world’s parliaments – itself an innovation – he’s careful to tailor his message to his audience. Speaking to Westminster, he channelled Churchill. To Capitol Hill, it was America “the leader of the free world”. To Budapest on Thursday, he invoked the memory of the fascist massacre on the banks of the Danube. He is intensifying his language too, shaming western allies for not doing enough. “Why can’t we get weapons from you?” he asked Israeli lawmakers on Sunday, reminding them they would “have to live with” their decision. Visually, he’s mixing things up: this week saw a montage, complete with voiceover in English. It looked and sounded like a trailer for a Hollywood blockbuster.
But canny messaging and sharp production values take you only so far. Pomerantsev says: “Sympathy is not enough. He has to take people on a journey towards something.”
. . .In truth, this should not all be on Zelenskiy and his extraordinary team of TV maestros. Putin’s threat is not just to Ukraine, but to a wider world that has not fully absorbed the menace it now confronts: a dictator ready to obliterate cities in the heart of Europe, his head filled with fantasies of conquest and domination, happy to ward off any challenge by threatening to unleash nuclear havoc. Turning back that danger cannot be left to a small group of creatives in a bunker in Kyiv, no matter how gifted. This is a task for the world."
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