That’s what you need most,” Brinkley said – although none of them had a Russian invasion on his hands. “Entertainers have an edge, because they’re able to communicate with people in a time of crisis. He also pointed to Ronald Reagan, who “was making movies with chimpanzees – ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ – and he ended up being the president to preside over the breakdown of the Berlin Wall.” He pointed to Lech Walesa, a trade unionist in Poland who ended up being a revolutionary and inspirational leader.īoth men rode a wave of revolution in Eastern Europe in 1989. “Nobody thought Havel, a playwright, could end up being a great world leader, and he did.” “Havel oozed democracy and had seen totalitarianism up close,” Brinkley said. It’s more Vaclav Havel than Churchill, argued Brinkley, pointing out that Havel was an absurdist playwright whose movement in Czechoslovakia – the Velvet Revolution – was named for a Western rock band, the Velvet Underground. He was an imperialist rather than a pure believer in democracy. He rejected them as overwrought.Ĭhurchill had already been a wartime leader, a war hero, a scandal survivor and a prolific writer by the time he took over as prime minister in 1940. I put the Churchill argument to Douglas Brinkley, the American presidential historian, in a phone call. Zelensky has been told definitively that the US will not raise arms against nuclear-armed Russia because it could set off World War III.īetter comparisons. Churchill held out hope that the US would join World War II, which it ultimately did. Poland has offered its Soviet-era MiG fighter jets to Ukraine via the US if the US will give Poland some US-made aircraft.Ī key difference. There could be some kind of half-measure. And it seems unlikely the US will give him the no-fly zone he wants to protect Ukrainians from Russian air power. Yet, while the West has imposed crippling sanctions on Russia, it has not yet cut off the supply of Russian oil to Western countries. The House of Commons cheered Zelensky and gave him a standing ovation. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost,” he said in his comments translated by an interpreter, echoing some of Churchill’s words. We will fight until the end at sea, in the air. “We will not give up and we will not lose. Ukraine under Zelensky won’t roll over for Vladimir Putin. Zelensky invited the comparison on Tuesday when he riffed on Churchill’s most famous speech, delivered at Britain’s darkest hour and broadcast to inspire the country.Īs he addressed the UK House of Commons via video, Zelensky compared Ukraine’s struggle now to Britain’s back then.Įngland under Churchill wouldn’t bend to the fascists. ![]() ![]() The thinking is that Zelensky has traded Churchill’s wireless radio and bowler hat for his own smartphone and a green T-shirt. Zelensky deserves awe and praise, and the comparisons to Winston Churchill are coming from the left, the right and the media. But while Trump used social media to beat down opponents like a bully and chip away at confidence in American democracy, Zelensky is using short internet videos and social media posts to build up support for his own democracy as it faces extinction. Most Americans used to know Zelensky only as a background player – the President of a smaller country who wouldn’t dig up dirt on Joe Biden for Donald Trump in an infamous phone call. And now we are used to the fact that every day and every night are like that.” “You know, we used to say: Monday is a hard day,” he said, according to a translation. The former comedian started things off with what seemed to be a dark joke about the workweek. And yet there he was, appearing Monday night from his official workplace in Kyiv, in a video that was part selfie and part doomsday presidential address. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is an obvious target for the Russian invaders. What was he thinking going into the office?
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