Dan Snow's History Hit - The Rise of Zelenskyy

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

Volodymyr Zelenskyy's meteoric rise to power has been packed with drama and action. His journey has taken him from a Russian-speaking, aspiring diplomat to a TV comedian and finally, one of the most recognisable politicians on the planet. Having once been firmly rooted in Russian culture, he is now the greatest symbol of defiance to a Russian invasion that has wreaked havoc in his country. But what caused this shift? How did controversy mire his early years in office? And what can we expect from him in the future? Joining us today is Steven Derix, a long-standing Russia and Ukraine reporter and author of Zelensky: A Biography of Ukraine’s War Leader, to guide us through the life and career of Ukraine's celebrated leader.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi, buddy. Welcome to Dan Snow's History. We'll talk about President Zelensky at the moment. But who is this guy? What's his history? How do we understand him? Well, obviously, better look at his past. That's the whole point of this podcast. So Stephen Derricks is a Dutch journalist. He works at the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. And he was their correspondent for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus from 2014 to 2020. He's been there loads. He's hung out with the people. He's kicked the tires, knows what's going on. He's just written a book called Zelensky, a biography of Ukraine's war leader. And he points out lots of fascinating stuff about Zelensky. For example, he couldn't speak Ukrainian when he decided to run for president. He's an interesting guy.

He also ran on the peace ticket. He said, I'm the guy that can make peace with Putin. So you know what they say about politicians' promises, folks. This really enriched the way I think about Zelensky in Ukraine. So I hope you enjoy it. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Stephen, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Yeah, thank you. So you were in Ukraine way back in, what, 2014? You must have, so you visited many times. Just before we start talking about Zelensky, what changes did you see over the course of your reporting career?

Well, what I've seen is that the ongoing crisis and the ongoing crisis and the ongoing war in Ukraine has actually brought the country together. So the Ukraine that I saw in 2014, which was not prepared for a Russian invasion, the annexation of the Crimea, is a totally different country from the country we see today. And when I was in Ukraine towards the beginning of that period, the roads were bad. there's still a lot of corruption, it was swinging between Western-leaning and Russian-leaning leaders. It felt like a very troubled, very divided country. Yeah, so I'm afraid to say the roads are still very bad. In many ways, oligarchs still rule the country, although less than before the war. But the one

thing that has really changed is that this division between the East and the West has completely disappeared. Even people who live in the East and who speak Russian and not Ukrainian are now fully convinced that the West is their future, that Ukraine is their country, and that they never want to be part of Russia again, or never want to be part of Russia. Interesting. Now let's talk about the man himself, the one who for so many people outside Ukraine feels like the kind of focus and the embodiment of their struggle. Zelensky, where did he come from? Is he from the east or the west? He's from the southeast, from a place called, well, I think it translates into English, into Crooked Horn, Krivyi Rih, which is also a Ukrainian funny name, actually.

It's a mining town. It's a very dreary place. It's deep, deep, deep down in the province. Zelensky makes a lot of jokes about his heritage in this regard. It's in the southeast. It's deep, deep, deep down in the province. Zelensky makes a lot of jokes about his heritage in this regard. It's in the southeast. It's a place where people speak Russian. People were also oriented towards Russia for a very long time, even after independence. So Zelensky never managed to speak any Ukrainian. He had it at school, but he couldn't really speak it until, I would say, the presidential elections in 2019.

So he's from a kind of mining town with very little prospects, actually, although both his parents were from the so-called intelligentsia, so they were both engineers, or they are both engineers because they're still alive. They send him to a very good school, but coming from Krivyi Rih and growing up in the 90s is not the best ticket for a bright future, I would say. And for part of his childhood, he would have grown up in the Soviet Union. Yes, of course. He was born in 1978. I don't think he really remembers a lot about that.

I think his world is the post-Soviet world of the 90s with the extreme poverty, the extreme corruption. Also a world where everybody was still looking towards Moscow as the center of gravity of this whole post-Soviet world. He himself wanted to study in Moscow to become a diplomat. And he actually wanted to enter the Mgimo, which is a very famous elite university, which used to be the school for the Soviet elite and which is now the school for the rich and powerful in Russia. So he wanted to enter this university to become a diplomat. And he would have become a colleague of, let's say,

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, if it weren't for the money, because you have to bribe people to get in. So he didn't have the money. He then launched a career as a comedian in the kind of very popular cabaret show, which is also a product of the Soviet Union, actually. It's a kind of student competition between different teams in which each team has to make jokes. And there are winners and losers in our competitions. And in the 90s, there were competitions in Ukraine, in Belarus, even in Kazakhstan and Georgia. And he

was actively competing in that. And that launched his career. He spent a lot of time in Moscow, actually, working, writing texts. He was actually dreaming of entering one of the famous theatre schools in Moscow. So his world was, in many ways, Russia, not Ukraine. That's so interesting. Might he have gone as far in those early days of seeing Russia and Ukraine as, in fact, one culture, almost one nation? Do we know at what stage he did start to see Ukraine as a separate entity? Well, we know for sure that this started in 2014. Before that, he was always very, very neutral. I don't think that he saw himself as a Russian. So he always saw himself as a Ukrainian.

But most definitely, his business was for a large part in Russia, or even the most important part of his business was in Russia. He was also very famous in Russia, very popular. He made TV shows, which were extremely popular in Russia. He presented The Voice, you know, this talent show. I think it's a Dutch invention, actually, but it was also huge in Russia. He presented that. He even was the host on New Year's Eve, which is like the biggest TV event in Russia. I would say in 2012, he would have been one of the most popular Ukrainians in Russia, I would say. And this changed only after the Maidan uprising and the Russian intervention. Actually, during the Maidan uprising, he was still trying to stay neutral. Not as much neutral in the sense that at that time,

the country was divided between people who wanted to vote for parties who saw Ukraine's future in the West and were usually Ukrainian speaking and from Western Ukraine. And people from the East who supported the then incumbent president Yanukovych, who doesn't speak a word of Ukrainian himself. And in this kind of internal conflict in Ukraine, he always stayed conspicuously neutral.

So during the Maidan uprising, you may remember that this took a lot of months of protests before actually the real crisis ensued. During these months, a lot of popular and famous Ukrainians visited the Maidan to talk to the protesters, show their face. He didn't do that. So up until this moment, he was neutral. But this changed after the annexation of the Crimea in March 2014. I think this opened up his eyes. People may remember the Orange Revolution, which was 2004. And that's Viktor Yushchenko, who was the kind of pro-Western guy, beat Viktor Yanukovych.

But there was corruption and everything. So Yushchenko took over. Then Yanukovych ended up quietly winning the 2010 election, right? So it kind of swung back towards Russia. And it's then getting Yanukovych out in February 24 is the Maidan, right? Exactly, yes. There were snipers on roofs. It was violent. A lot of people killed, about 80 people shot, actually, by Yanukovych's riot police. So yeah,

up until this moment, you could see that there were two forces in Ukraine, and the country swung from one side to the other, western side and eastern side. And this changed after 2014. And this also forced Zelensky to make up his mind and make a choice, which he did in the end. He supported the troops. He performed from the front line. He gave shows for soldiers. He started to collect money because by this time he was a very famous and rich man. So this is following, we're in 2014, the Maidan revolution has happened, and almost immediately, Russia didn't accept the result of that

and annexed the Crimea, which was traditionally part of Russia, and also started sending in infiltrators into the kind of southeast of Ukraine. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. I actually vividly remember that I was in Slavyansk in April 2014 when Mr. Igor Gilkin appeared with his so-called little green men and occupied the town. And I remember that I saw the Ukrainian army trying to do something about it and being in utter confusion. So those were very difficult times for the nation.

But it also forced everyone in Ukraine to make up their mind, not only Zelensky, because in some places, like in the east, in Donetsk, for example, these so-called separatists, or actually you could say they were agents of Moscow, they managed to take over the city. But in other cities, this didn't happen. For instance, in Kharkiv, there was also unrest, but there was no takeover. The same in Odessa in the south. And at that point, I think most of the country definitely chose to be Ukrainian, even people who actually didn't speak a word of the language. And when you say he did gigs for the troops to raise money, these are now Ukrainian troops fighting a kind of insurgency, these Russian agents, these so-called little green men.

And so the Ukrainian army is trying to maintain the integrity of the Ukrainian state in the east and the southeast. Okay, and Zelensky's showing up and supporting that effort. He just went public and said, I support our troops and we all have to unite to defend our country against Russia. I think everybody understood who was behind all of this. And the fact that he was doing that as a kind of Russian-leaning person who'd lived in Russia for a long time and been a Russian celebrity, him as a unifying figure, that helps to explain that. He's not just a guy from Western Ukraine who always regarded the Russians as kind of barbarians. He has this particular voice because he actually, he kind of was pretty Russian. Culturally, it was almost Russian. You could

say that, yes. He didn't consider himself to be Russian. He was proud of Ukraine. I think we have to remember that he always saw himself as a man who was going to bring peace. He didn't see himself as a war leader. So when he entered the presidential electoral race in 2019, he said, I am going to combat corruption. I'm going to get rid of corruption for once and for all in this country. But the second promise he made, he says, I am going to make peace. And I'm the man who can do it because I am from there. These are my people. So I am the person who can build bridges between the West and East. These are my people. So I am the person who can build bridges between the West and East. That didn't kind of work out entirely as planned. So you went from playing gigs, doing comedy gigs and things, raising money. When did you start to launch a

formal political career? Yeah, it's very difficult to kind of exactly pinpoint when this happened. But in 2015, he started a very popular television series, which is called Servant of the People. You might have seen something of it because it's on Netflix actually now. And this is the story of a history teacher who by accident becomes president because at a certain moment he launches into a 10 minute rant about politics in Ukraine and all the corruption and all politicians are bad. And one of his students actually films him and puts the video online. This launches a political career and he's elected. And then he's as a complete outsider, he's confronted with Ukrainian politics.

It's actually quite funny. And the thing is, we don't know whether he started this television series with the ultimate goal of actually running himself, or that he started with the television series playing the president of the country and then thought, oh, I can actually do this. So he started to believe in it himself. We know for sure that around 2017, while he was doing this television show, he was playing the president, he actually registered his own political party. And he also started to learn Ukrainian at that point, because he understood that he could not

become the president of a country if he didn't speak Ukrainian. He only just started learning Ukrainian then? Yes, yes. Actually, during the election campaign, he actually kind of tried to not be involved with debates because he would actually be caught out. But in the end, he couldn't refuse. There was a debate with the then incumbent President Poroshenko in the Olympic Stadium, and which he had to do in Ukrainian, but he managed. Wow. Because the only difference there between his character that he plays and his actual characters, he's not just a history teacher, an outsider. He was incredibly wealthy. He would have been rubbing shoulders with all these oligarchs in Ukraine and Russia. He'd have known them all. He would have done private gigs for them. So actually, he was a member of this kind of pre-war elite.

In many ways, yes. There was also a scandal which broke in the second year of his presidency when it was discovered. You know, you might remember the Pandora Papers. And it was discovered that he actually funneled his millions to offshore accounts on the Virgin Islands and on Cyprus, etc., etc. So, yeah, he's a millionaire. And he knows a lot of oligarchs personally. For certain, he knows all the oligarchs in Ukraine, but he also knows a lot of people in Russia, actually.

In listening to Dan Snow's history, we're talking about Zelensky. More coming up. I'm Tristan Hughes, host of the Ancients from History Hit, where twice a week, every week, we delve into our ancient past. I'm joined by leading experts, academics and authors who share incredible stories from our distant history and shine a light on some of antiquity's great questions.

Was the Oracle of Delphi really able to see into the future? What can be discovered from lost civilizations? And was King Arthur actually real? You can expect all of this and more from the Ancients on History hit wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. To be continued... After this big debate in the Olympiclympic stadium he wins that election was it marred with corruption was it controversial that election no it was not which is actually in large part thanks to poroshenko who didn't discuss the results at the end so actually made way for the new president that is laudable because we've seen that there were problems in 2004. So there were fair elections. I think a large party won because a lot of Ukrainians at

that point in time, they really had enough of the war and they wanted somebody who was telling them there was going to be a future for the country. And here was this outside who said, OK, I'm going to get rid of corruption. I'm going to make peace. Competing against President Poroshenko, he said, I am the man of the army. I'm the man who stood up to Putin. And at that point, Ukrainians didn't want the war to continue. They wanted something else. They wanted a future.

And here was a man who was promising them exactly that. That is ironic. It's very ironic, yes. That's crazy. So he wins the election in 2019. The war goes on in the South and East, but then there's obviously the major invasion in 2022. What's he doing for those two or three years pre-Big War period?

We should say that he actually managed to get himself into a lot of trouble because he wants to make good on his promise to combat corruption, but he soon finds out that this is an almost unsurmountable task in a country like Ukraine. For instance, after the presidential election, he then goes on to win the parliamentary election, and he has a majority in the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, which is only one chamber,

so he can actually pass all the legislation that he wants. But he soon finds out that a lot of people that he kind of recruited to be his parliamentarians are also corrupt and are not voting for the legislation that he wants. But he soon finds out that a lot of people that he kind of recruited to be his parliamentarians are also corrupt and they're not voting for the legislation that he wants to pass because some oligarch has bought them. The Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which at that point was deeply corrupt, actually said that one of the most important tools to combat corruption, which was a register in which all civil servants had to declare their income, which was a register in which all civil servants had to declare their income,

was against privacy regulations and had to be taken offline. So he actually goes from one crisis to the next. And at a certain point, he starts to govern the country through a political institution, which is called the Defense and Security Council of Ukraine. Actually, Putin also has something like that. He's a security council. So this is an institution in which the president talks with the prime minister, with the ministry of defense, with the security services, et cetera, et cetera. This had always been dormant in Ukraine, but in 2015, it was reinstituted by President Poroshenko. And Zelensky starts to actually govern the country

through this institution. So a lot of questions he resolves by saying, well, this is a matter of national interest or national security. Therefore, I've taken a decision in the Security Council and we're going to do this and this and this. Instead of saying, okay, first we have to draw up a law which we have to pass through Parliament and everybody has to look at it.

His whole government started to become almost authoritarian i would say there was a lot of people criticizing that at that moment in time and he said yeah this is the only way to get rid of all the problems that we have enlightened despotism yeah we've all had that one before yes so is he popular in ukraine at the end of 2021 would he have been a popular guy or not? No, not at all. Not at all. And actually, he was also on a lot of pressure because of the Russian buildup at the border, which he didn't have a clear answer to. So there were a lot of people saying, are we going to mobilize the country? What are we going to do about these Russian troops? And the Americans were saying, look, there's going to be an invasion and it's going to be on this and this date. They actually said when it was going to happen and he didn't do anything.

So I would say that that was probably the worst moment in his career, actually, just before the war. I have to remember that still a lot of people in Ukraine at this point in time are more critical of him than we in the West, because we see him as this sacrosanct leader. We'll come to that. Yeah, definitely. We're going to come to that. So the war happens. Does his popularity turn around on that day? Or is it his behavior, you know, the fact he stays behind in Kiev, he delivers these addresses, you know, he's a good wartime leader. What turns his popularity around? Well, the decisive moment is, of course, the second day of the war. He decides to stay in Kiev, although actually the Russians are hunting him. And there's actually fighting going on in Kiev itself. And he's offered a way out by the Americans and the Brits. And they have this very famous quote that he says,

I don't need a ride, I need ammunition. But for Ukrainians, the most important thing is that he came out of his palace on the evening of the 25th. And he stood there with his closest members of his cabinet. And he said, President Tult, the president is here. So I'm not going to run. I'm going to stay. I'm going to defend the country. And from this moment on, he's always been there for the Ukrainian people. Because if you follow his Instagram page, you will find a speech by Zelensky almost every day. So he talks to Ukrainian people almost every day. And he does so in a very personal way. He really behaves like he's one of them. He knows how to talk to them. He knows how to not only be an example, but also be somebody people can feel

close to. So in this way, he's a bit like maybe not the father of the people, but for sure an uncle. An uncle you like. In the West, you know, but for sure an uncle. An uncle you like. In the West, you know, he can do no wrong. He addressed the British Parliament. Is he regarded the same way in Ukraine or are people there more critical of him? I think in the West, we have a very one-sided view of him because we didn't really follow him before the war. Ukrainians, of course, remember that.

There is a very long tradition in Ukraine of criticizing, actually, the government or the president or voting the president out of office. A lot of people criticized him because of the fact that he didn't mobilize before the war. And there were actually a lot of articles in Ukrainian newspapers saying that, in a sense, the massacre that happened at Bucha, just outside of Kiev, is also the fault of Zelensky, because he didn't mobilize, he didn't warn people. He had his reasons to do that, of course, but in Ukraine, people are much more critical of him. Although I have to say that, of course, he's still a very popular man. What's his personal view, for example, on Crimea? What does he want at the end

of this war? What does he need from it? Well, before the war, he was very vague about how he's going to bring about peace. He also gave the impression that he was maybe too dovish. So a lot of people in Ukraine were criticising him for that. He gave the impression that he was, for instance, he was prepared to give up the Crimea, give that to Putin in order to achieve peace. And now he's changed his tune. And I'm not really sure whether he's doing that because of the momentum that he has now, that he feels that there is a real chance that he could get back these territories, or that he is now listening to the general mood in the country, which most Ukrainians now say, no compromise, we want everything back. And then we can talk about peace.

But I think deep in his heart, he knows that at some point, compromises have to be made. So I think in many ways, he would be a figure that would be able to strike a deal, although he's politically smart enough now not to say that, look, I'm going to negotiate with Putin, because that would be a very unpopular thing to say in Ukraine right now. And he was actually asked the question, what do you think about Putin? Would you sit down with him during an interview? And then he got away with it by saying, well, who is Putin now? He's nobody. I don't think about him at all.

So he knows that at this moment in time when the war is raging and hundreds of Ukrainians are dying almost every day, because we have to remember it's not only Russian soldiers who are getting killed. You know, the latest figures show that 120,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been either killed or wounded. So the mood in the country is not one of negotiations right now. But I'm sure that once the need arises, he would be able to do that. And Stephen, what are you hearing from your sources? What's going on with Bakhmut in particular? Are the Russians being sort of bled white there?

Is there a master plan? Are the Ukrainians going to counterattack? Or is it just a brutal attritional struggle? Of course, it's a brutal attritional struggle. We've seen reports from Bakhmut about the Ukrainian soldiers who are doing the fighting there now. And they're actually talking to soldiers in the streets of Bakhmut. And a lot of them, they had like three hours at the shooting range. That was it. They had just been drafted into the army, sent to Bakhmut to defend against

the Wagner mercenaries. I think there's so many people in the Ukrainian army now killed that they have to send unprepared troops to the front line. On the other hand, we're hearing that, at least I have the impression and other analysts have the impression, that Ukraine is preparing something with the new equipment that's being sent to Ukraine. Armoured fighting vehicles, of course, Western Leopard tanks, British tanks, and that they are preparing for something. So actually, what I'm hoping for is that Zelensky is continuing the fight in Bakhmut with, let's say, low level troops, and is kind of sacrificing these in order to be able to launch this counter offensive later in the spring. That feels like a definitely a possibility there. Stephen, thank you so much indeed for coming on the podcast and tell me all about it. I'm thinking of planning my prime ministerial run now. Start pretending I'm a prime minister and then become one. That's got me thinking.

Tell everyone what your book is called. It's called Zelensky, Ukraine's President and His Country. Brilliant. Okay, well, thank you very much for coming on. My pleasure. you