Consider This from NPR - The Man Leading Ukraine

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

It's been exactly one week since Russia invaded Ukraine, which means one week since Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, became a wartime president. So far, he has mastered his message and has garnered praised from around the world, but there's a lot more to winning a war than videos and viral tweets. Emily Harding with the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains why Zelenskyy has been such an effective communicator and what challenges lie ahead. And Angela Stent of the Brookings Institution discusses what the world is learning about the other leader in this war, Russia's president Vladimir Putin. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

One week ago, Ukrainians woke up to missile attacks from Russia. An unprovoked invasion had begun. One of those Ukrainians was a 22-year-old college student named Vitaly. We're using his first name only for safety reasons. It's really scary because the apartment, the houses are trembling. It's very loud, noiseless, I guess. That was when I spoke with Vitaly last week. He spoke with NPR again this week on Wednesday.

Things had gotten worse. I cannot say that that is good morning because I hear outside right now there's like a rocket launcher and lots of shootings going on. A lot of people are terrified. There's a lot of Russian troops are walking the streets. Vitaly is in Kherson, a port city on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. It is the first city Russian troops have captured. In my neighborhood, there was a man. Yesterday, he went outside and he wanted to buy some food. And unfortunately for him, there was a bomb.

And while that bomb tore apart this man, and well, I don't know what to say anymore. To the north, the outlook is more hopeful for Ukrainians. The capital, Kiev, remains in their control. A massive Russian convoy on its way to the city has been stalled by Ukrainian forces, as well as by fuel and food shortages. In a video recorded from his bunker on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Russian soldiers,

go home, that in Ukraine, wherever they go, they will be destroyed. He says Russia will meet nothing but resistance because for Ukrainians this is a patriotic war. And he said, we know how patriotic wars start and how they end for the invaders. Consider this. It has been exactly one week since Russia invaded Ukraine, which means one week since Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, became a wartime president. Coming up, we'll look at how he is dominating the messaging of the moment and how he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are leading their respective countries during this war. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Thursday, March 3rd.

It's Consider This from NPR. As Russian missiles began to hit Ukrainian cities last Thursday, Volodymyr Zelensky ditched his standard presidential suit and tie and addressed the world in an army green t-shirt. I remain in the capital. My family is also in Ukraine. My children are in Ukraine. They are not traitors. They are citizens of Ukraine. He said they were staying put, despite the clear risk. According to the information we have, the enemy has marked me as target number one, my family as target number two. He also called into an emergency summit of EU leaders in Brussels, telling them this might be the last time you see me alive.

Of course, it wasn't. The video dispatches have continued. Like this one, where in the early morning hours, Zelensky appears in front of one of the most recognizable buildings in Kyiv, right across from his presidential offices. He signed off with Glory to Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine. Over the past week, Zelensky has been all over social media. He's also been working the phones, asking world leaders to do more to help his country.

And his leadership has won praise. Take, for example, what Republican Senator Mitt Romney told CNN, comparing Zelensky to the president of Russia. Look at Vladimir Putin. Here he is behind this huge table in this big white room. I mean, it looks like a mausoleum where honesty and honor have gone to die. And contrast that with Zelensky, with his courage, with his passion, with his true leadership. This is remarkable, and it's having an impact. And I hope it makes us a better people, and it makes us more committed to the principles of freedom. Zelensky has proven a master at the communication aspect of his role one week into this war,

which perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise since before he became president, he was a TV star, a celebrity in Ukraine. But there's a lot more to winning a war than videos and viral tweets. To discuss Zelensky's wartime leadership, I spoke with Emily Harding. She's been tracking the war from her perch at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in Washington, D.C. I want to start with that moment I just mentioned. This was one week ago. Zelensky told European leaders, this may be the last time you see me alive. It wasn't, thankfully. But describe the impact on EU leaders who were listening to that,

who have been watching via video link. I think Zelensky's leadership in this situation has really been inspirational. We talk in the US about profiles and courage. This is what it looks like. The comment that you made about him going from his normal suit and tie to his army green t-shirts to his army sweaters, the images of him showing up in the streets next to his troops, walking around and showing people what's really going on, these have been very powerful. And I think those direct messages to EU leaders saying that we are all Ukrainians, we are all the same, asking directly for their help has been huge in really cementing opposition to this Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The other line that may stick in people's heads from this last week is the reported response that President Zelensky made to a U.S. offer to evacuate him, where he said, I need ammunition, not a ride. I wonder when you heard that, I should mention that part of your background is you are a former CIA analyst, you were a leadership analyst, you were looking at what makes leaders. When you look at Zelensky right now, what do you see? I see someone who is really stepping into his element. The contrast between him and Vladimir Putin's leadership is stark. You see Putin at a huge long table, distanced from all of his advisors, looking paranoid, looking separated, very much emotional in a lot of his speeches. And then you see Zelensky,

who's standing next to his soldiers, who is down in the streets, who is talking about his family and his country and how he's going to stand up to Putin's rule. His rise from, you know, somebody who maybe wasn't taken incredibly seriously as a former comedian and now president, he has really risen to this moment. And when he made that comment about I need ammunition, not a ride, I mean, I couldn't help but smile. I think that the whole world probably looked at that as an iconic moment of this conflict. Well, and to the point of how big a transformation this is, how very not seriously he was being taken. Really recently, I want to play a little bit of tape. I was in Ukraine just a few weeks ago reporting. At the end of January, Volodymyr Zelensky's poll numbers were abysmal. We struggled to find anyone who liked him. This is one remark from a woman we met on Maidan, Independence Square in central Kiev. She was 32 years old. Her name is Yana Yarosh. Are you confident in the government here? Are you kidding me? No.

That's a good joke, actually, to be confident in the government. No, no. Personally, I do not trust what they say. You hear her laughing there. It's a good joke. The mere thought of being confident in the government. How do you explain a transformation like that? Well, I mean, in any conflict or moment of crisis, there's always a rally around the flag effect. So I think any leader would expect to have a bump in their approval rating, just because people do rally behind what they see as a hope in his leadership. But Zelensky has more than outstripped

expectations there. I mean, his leadership has been inspirational. He's really been speaking for the voice of the Ukrainian people. His attempts to speak directly to the Russian people have been really impressive when he speaks in Russian, and he said, Yeah, he's fluent in both, like a lot of Ukrainians, so he can speak directly to both peoples. Yeah. Exactly. His comments about how, you know, this denazification claim that Putin is pursuing, you know, hey, I'm a Jewish Russian speaking Ukrainian, I don't know what this guy's talking about. He's really done very well at being very relatable, but then also being a very strong leader. And he has risen to the occasion during this crisis.

Is there a risk of building him up too much, a risk to lionizing him in this moment? Of course, I think there always is that risk. I mean, the outpouring of support to the Ukrainian people has been dramatic. And that's in part because we've seen all these heroic stories come out of Ukraine. I really worry that in the next week or so, we're going to see the tide turn a little bit and the Russians are going to double down on some of their terrible tactics. And then we may see things start to turn a little bit. And I don't want the world to lose faith in the Ukrainian people and their will to fight because I think they're going to keep fighting. I mean, that's it's you're injecting

a note of realism here, which is that you have this president who is inspiring people in his country and around the world. But the fundamental dynamics of this fight have not changed much. This is still Ukraine fighting on its own and against a way bigger, way better resourced Russian military. That's right. The Russian advances have bogged down in several places along the way, but that is not a permanent condition. Lots of people are making comparisons between this and the Russo-Finnish war. There are ways that Russia can redouble its efforts, can get those convoys moving again, can frankly use artillery and their air force to much greater effect if they want to. I suspect that Zelensky is going to stay on camera and keep talking about how well the Ukrainians are doing for as long as he possibly can.

Emily Harding, she's with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Back to that comparison we heard Senator Romney make earlier about the contrast between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Recent photographs show Putin sitting at the head of a very long table. At the other end, 10, 20 feet away, sits a foreign leader or his own senior advisors. This is reportedly a COVID precaution, but Putin is literally keeping everyone at way more than arm's length. I think these decisions are being made very much by Putin himself in conjunction with a few other people who aren't going to contradict him. Angela Stent is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

She wrote the book Putin's World, Russia Against the West and With the Rest. She spoke with NPR's Sasha Pfeiffer about what this war is teaching us about the other leader involved. Given the pushback that Putin is getting, do you think there is a chance of a ceasefire agreement in the near future? I wish there would be, but I very much doubt that there is, and they seem to be uninterested in that. The goal is clearly to subjugate Ukraine. We see now columns of tanks moving in on Kiev. The second largest city, Kharkov, is under extreme bombardment with heavy casualties. So it looks as if what they're going to do is fight until they have subdued the

country, and then they're going to try and install a government which will be pro-Russian. And as much as the world is uniting around and behind Ukraine right now, do you feel that ultimately Putin and Russia prevail here? They probably will prevail because the United States, for very good reasons, has said we are not going to send American troops to fight Russia. We're two nuclear superpowers and therefore we can't do that. NATO is not going to get into a war with Russia. There is a limit to what the West can do, given the fact that Russia is a nuclear superpower and is intent on

conquering Ukraine. That's a very grim assessment, especially given all the sort of social media cheering and rallying behind Ukraine and hoping for the best. Well, and of course, we should be amazed by how well they're fighting back in their resistance and their spirit. But they too realize that they are really alone in this fight. We are trying to supply them now with more weapons to fight the Russians. And of course, all of the sanctions that we've imposed on Russia, crippling, brutal sanctions. But that doesn't seem to have changed Putin's calculus either. We are hearing reports of Russians being arrested because they've had anti-war protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg and other cities. Do those protests seem representative to you? Can we gauge what Russian citizen sentiment is

toward Putin based on them? Well, what's remarkable is that these brave Russians are protesting all across Russia, not just in the big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, which we expect more. We've had 170 prominent journalists and cultural figures sign letters condemning the war. We've even had some of the oligarchs come out and say that peace talks need to begin immediately. And I think we have to wait and see what happens when body bags start coming back and how the average family responds to that. And of course, for those Russians who only watch state-run media, what they're being told is that this war is a result of American and NATO aggression.

And so the public opinion data that we do have shows that over 50% of the Russian population blame the United States for this. Even if the Russian public turned on Putin, do revulsion and protests make any difference in an autocratic country? It's very difficult for that to affect the political system. And Russia has become a much more repressive country in the last year even. And most of, you know, 5,000 people have already been arrested for protesting this war. Many opposition figures are either in jail or in exile.

So it's very difficult to make that opposition felt at the highest level. Angela Stent of the Brookings Institution speaking with my colleague Sasha Pfeiffer. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.