Charting Zelensky’s journey from outsider to superhero of the democratic world
When Time magazine journalist Simon Shuster first met Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019, he didn’t sense he was in the company of a statesman-in-the-making. Zelensky had just started his campaign to become president, and in an interview backstage at a Kyiv concert hall, he complained about the prospect of rubbing shoulders with the global political elite.
“They’re all snobs, or what?” he said of fellow world leaders, insisting he’d only meet the “fun” ones, and leave the dullards for his civil servants to deal with.
It was fighting talk from a man who’d vowed to shake up the political establishment – but given that his neighbors included the notably un-fun Vladimir Putin, somewhat naive. So when Shuster met Zelensky again in his wartime bunker in the Spring of 2022, he was astonished at his metamorphosis into a stubbly, fleece-wearing Churchill.
“Most Ukrainians did not believe he had it in him,” he writes. “Neither did I.”
The Showman, Shuster’s accomplished new biography of Zelensky at war, sets out just how Zelensky rose to the occasion, charting his journey from outsider to the superhero of the democratic world. It helped, of course, that as a former comedian, he was already a gifted orator. But when 70,000 Russian troops closed in on Kyiv, and Western leaders offered to help him flee, his decision to stay put was a simple one. Better to risk real death in combat, he reasoned, rather than stage death in front of the world.
“If he gave in to panic and handed his capital over to the Russians, he knew the shame would follow him for the rest of his life,” Shuster writes. “His fear of that indignity seemed to outweigh the fear of being killed or captured.”
Hence the pistol that Zelenksy kept in his bunker – carried not for a Hitler-style suicide, but to shoot back with should Russians ever over-run it. Anyone who talks up Zelensky’s warrior credentials should be aware, though, that his own British hero isn’t Churchill but Charlie Chaplin, whose 1940 satire “The Great Dictator” lampooned Hitler.
“Chaplin used the weapon of information during the Second World War to fight fascism,” Zelensky tells Shuster. Getting the right message to the world, he says, can be “stronger than artillery”.
The comparison is apt because “the weapon of information” has been Zelensky’s great asset too. Unlike Churchill, who had the armed forces of a world power behind him, Zelensky’s Ukraine was the underdog, unsure if it even existed coherently as a state. His wartime speeches not only gave Ukrainians a much-needed sense of unity, but persuaded the West to give it the weapons needed to stand up to the world’s most feared superpower.
All of which means that in coming years, there may be as many biographies of Zelensky as of Churchill – many doubtless claiming “insider access” on their dustjacket. Few, though, will better Shuster’s credentials. A fluent Russian speaker, he knew Zelensky’s team long before the war, remaining part of the inner circle when the president became the world’s most in-demand interviewee. In the invasion’s early days, he was among the few journalists allowed through the formidable security of the wartime bunker; later, he accompanied Zelensky on visits to Bucha and Kherson.
The result is a vivid account of life beneath the ground at 11 Bankova Street in Kyiv, where the presidential team lived in a Soviet-built nuclear shelter resembling “a Tubeway tunnel” fitted out like an office. Even for Zelensky, who was used to staying in flop-houses during his days as a touring stand-up, it was a spartan existence. His bed was no bigger than a cot, while his staff had mattresses on the floor and communal bathrooms.
Zelensky’s team spent weeks there, living off stale sandwiches and chocolate, unsure if they’d get out alive. At one point, according to an aide, Zelensky looked like a “walking corpse”. His hardest hours, though, were also his finest: he felt exhausted but exhilarated, Shuster writes, with a “profound sense of purpose”.
Life was arguably harder for his wife, Olena, who had to leave Kyiv with the couple’s two children, amid fears they might be taken hostage. The First Lady later complains that the only time she sees her husband is during joint TV appearances.
Shuster also provides a fine overview of the war raging outside – courtesy, again, of access to key figures, like General Valerii Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s armed forces head. Zaluzhny tells him how he let Russia’s armed forces approach Kyiv largely unopposed, aiming to strike once their supply lines were overstretched. “We needed the adversary to think that we are all deployed in our usual bases, smoking grass, watching TV, and posting on Facebook,” he says.
It helped, Shuster adds, that the invaders often used maps of Ukraine from 1989, leaving them hopelessly lost and exposed. Another game-changer was Kyiv’s improving relationship with Washington, which was impressed by how Zaluzhny’s forces handled themselves in the first month. At the end of April 2022, Washington started to hand Ukraine far better weaponry and intelligence, seeing it as a once-in-a-generation chance to “wreck the Russian war machine.”
Shuster avoids canonizing St Volodymyr of Kyiv. Part of his saintly reputation, he points out, is because he has used emergency decrees to shut down independent TV channels, meaning not much criticism gets aired. When (or if) those decrees are lifted, there will be tough questions about whether enough was done to prepare for the war, and whether too many Ukrainians have died fighting it.
But on claims that Zelensky himself is showing autocratic tendencies, Shuster gives the president the benefit of the doubt. At one point, he says, Zelensky rejected plans by Ukraine’s postal service for a stamp with his face on. “It’s not time to start a cult of personality,” he said.
After several books on the Ukraine war that have suffered from haste of publication, this is the best so far: an elegant account of the invasion’s first year, as seen by those in the very eye of the storm. Publication deadlines, though, mean it doesn’t really cover how Ukraine’s fortunes have worsened in recent months.
The summer counter-offensive is perceived to have failed, and with Donald Trump possibly returning to the White House in November, Kyiv’s weapons tap could be turned off. Zelensky, meanwhile, has already complained that the Israel-Gaza war is “taking away the focus” on Ukraine. Even The Showman, it seems, can’t hold an audience forever.
The Showman is published by William Collins at £22. To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
