Volodymyr Zelenskyy | Twisting in the whirlwind

“Our two nations are allies in this battle,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his address to the U.S. Congress in December 2022. “We have to defeat the Kremlin…This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live…,” he said. The Ukrainian President was accorded a hero’s welcome in Washington DC, and both Biden administration officials and lawmakers declared their support for Kyiv. Earlier in the year, while addressing the House of Commons in London, Mr. Zelenskyy compared himself to Winston Churchill, the British wartime Prime Minister, without directly mentioning his name. “We will not give up, and we will not lose,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. Many hailed him as a “modern Churchill”. He was the ‘brave face’ of Ukraine’s dogged resistance against Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion. The U.S. and its European allies said they would support Ukraine “as long as it takes”. Mr. Zelenskyy believed them.

Cut to the present. Mr. Zelenskyy went to the White House on February 28 to sign a minerals deal between Ukraine and the U.S. He was welcomed by his American counterpart, Donald Trump, at the Oval Office, before the leaders, along with Vice President J.D. Vance and other diplomats, sat down for a meeting. What followed was an extraordinary public spat between the two Presidents that was telecast across the world. “You right now are not in a very good position. You are not winning this… You don’t have the cards right now,” Mr. Trump told the visiting Ukrainian President. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance berated Mr. Zelenskyy for being “ungrateful”. The meeting came to an abrupt end. A joint press conference that was planned earlier was cancelled. Mr. Zelenskyy left the White House without signing the economic partnership agreement. It was a remarkable turnaround of events for both Ukraine and its leader. How did it happen?

Also read | Will the U.S.’s changed Ukraine policy end the Russia-Ukraine war?

Rise to the top

Born to Jewish parents in 1978, Volodymyr Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine. Joining politics was not even close to young Zelenskyy’s imagination. He obtained a law degree from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, but never took law as a profession. His interests were elsewhere — the world of entertainment. Mr. Trump recently called Mr. Zelenskyy “a moderately successful comedian”. But Mr. Zelenskyy was actually quite successful as an actor and comedian. In 1997, at age 19, he won popularity as his team appeared in the finals of KVN (Club of the Funny and Inventive People), a comedy show that was broadcast across former Soviet republics. He later co-founded a studio, Kvartal 95, and joined hands with Ihor Kolomoisky, one of the wealthiest Ukrainians who owned the popular 1+1 network. Mr. Zelenskyy won national acclaim for his role as the fictional president of Ukraine, who fights the corrupt establishment, in the TV show, Servant of the People. It was this popularity that catapulted him to the centre of Ukrainian politics.

Mr. Zelenskyy presented himself as an alternative to the corrupt establishment. He promised to fight corruption, reform the system and make peace with Russia during the campaign, and won the second round of the 2019 presidential election with 73.23% vote, against incumbent Petro Poroshenko. But victory also put Mr. Zelenskyy in an unenviable position. Five years prior to his election, Russia had annexed Crimea, after mass protests, backed by the West, forced the elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych out of power. Ever since, a separatist civil war had been brewing in Ukraine’s east. Ukraine had agreed into Minsk agreements, under the mediation of France and Germany, aimed at bringing peace to the Donbas region, but those were not implemented.

After assuming office, Mr. Zelenskyy held a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and later announced a preliminary deal with the separatists, who were backed by Russia. In 2020, he declared a formal ceasefire. But none of these efforts brought the fighting in Donbas to an end — the hard-right nationalists on the Ukrainian side, including the Azov Brigade with neo-Nazi links, rejected the deal with separatists, while Russia continued to back the latter. In September 2020, in the midst of the crisis in Donbas, Mr. Zelenskyy unveiled a new national security strategy that called Russia an ‘aggressor’ and identified NATO membership as Ukraine’s key defence and foreign policy objective. Within two years, Mr. Putin would annex the Donbas Oblasts (Donetsk and Luhansk) and launch his invasion of Ukraine.

Mr. Putin may have wanted to wrap up his “special military operation” within days. But Ukrainian resistance denied a quick victory to the Russians. Mr. Zelenskyy, who refused to leave the country, took shelter in a bunker in the early days of war. The then Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, later recalled a conversation he had with Mr. Putin about Mr. Zelenskyy’s fate.

When he met Mr. Putin in Moscow in March 2022, Mr. Bennett asked him if he intended to kill Mr. Zelenskyy, to which the Russian leader said ‘No’.

“Are you giving me your word that you won’t kill Zelenskyy?” Mr. Bennett asked again.

“I won’t kill Zelenskyy,” said Mr. Putin.

Immediately after the three-hour meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Bennett called the Ukrainian leader and said: “I’ve just come out of a meeting — [Putin] is not going to kill you.”

Mr. Zelenskyy asked Mr. Bennett, ‘Are you sure?’ He said, “100%.”

Two hours after their conversation, Mr. Zelenskyy took a selfie in his office and posted it with the caption “I’m not afraid,” Mr. Bennett recalled in a YouTube interview, published after he left the Prime Minister’s office.

Fall from grace

The war turned Mr. Zelenskyy into a hero of sorts in the West: the man who stood up to “the evil dictator of Russia”. In March 2022, the Russians and Ukrainians were close to signing an agreement after talks in Istanbul to bring the war to an end, but Ukraine, egged on by the U.K. and the U.S., walked out of it at the last minute and preferred to fight on (according to various accounts by people who were privy to the Istanbul talks). When the Russian troops were forced to withdraw from Kharkiv and later Kherson, Mr. Zelenskyy hailed it as a victory, and vowed to liberate all territories captured by Russia, including Crimea.

Ukraine got weapons worth billions of dollars from the West, mainly the U.S. But Mr. Putin, after the initial setback, announced a partial mobilisation, aimed at fighting a long war. In the following months, Ukraine started losing territories in the east. In 2023, Kyiv launched a much talked-about counteroffensive, with advanced weaponry supplied by the West, aimed at recapturing the territories seized by Russia. But it turned out to be a damp squib. Ukraine’s fate was sealed in the months the counteroffensive failed.

But Mr. Zelenskyy continued to put up a brave face. His narrative was that if Ukraine falls, the Russians will march further towards the east, endangering Europe’s security. But that was his Plan A and B. It worked as long as Joe Biden was there in the White House. But Donald Trump returned to power with an entirely different agenda and worldview. Mr. Zelenskyy, who was almost entirely dependent on defence supplies from the U.S., was hardly prepared for that.

Now, the Trump administration seems determined to bring the war to an end through a direct deal with the Russians, leaving Mr. Zelenskyy in the cold. He lost more than 20% of his country’s territory. His troops are pushed back by the Russians on the battlefield. His country will not become a member of NATO. He is not going to get any security guarantees from the U.S. And, America wants a share of Ukraine’s natural resources to recoup the aid it gave to the war-torn country. On top of it all, President Trump now thinks Mr. Zelenskyy is an impediment to peace. “He [Zelenskyy] disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social immediately after Friday’s meeting was over. “He can come back when he is ready for peace,” he said.