On 24 February 2022 at 3.40am (GMT+2), the Russian Federation launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. Since then, Ukrainian cities have been bombed daily with heavy artillery and tanks. Missiles fly at civilian buildings, schools, maternity hospitals and even evacuation trains. The current invasion is a new stage in the eight-year Russian-Ukrainian war, since Russia occupied Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014.
Amongst it all, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has become the man who inspires millions. His courage, valour and committment to his people have shone through, in what has been an otherwise unbearably dark period for his country. Executive Director of one of Ukraine’s leading NGOs and a world policy Analyst, Olga Lymar shares why even though Zelenskyy’s sudden rise to the world’s political stage may seem unconventional, his affliction for leadership is anything but.
During his inaugural speech to Ukrainians in 2019, Zelenskyy famously said, “Each of us is the president.”
Until recently, you’d have been hard-pressed to believe that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be the one to lead Ukraine’s struggle against a raging war imposed by Russia. A few years ago, he didn’t even have anything to do with politics. Today, he’s the sixth president of an independent Ukraine–and suddenly one of the most extraordinary political leaders of our time. Call it irony or fate, but the man who once portrayed himself as an ordinary man on-screen fighting the odds to become the valiant leader of his nation, is now living this narrative as his reality.
So what made him stand out? What events have underpinned his extraordinary rise to the global stage? Is he truly the untapped underdog we never saw coming, or are we simply living in an age of unconventional political upheaval? Why is Volodymyr Zelenskyy the most unconventional man of 2022?
The Background
For a start, every step leading up to Zelenskyy’s political biography has been unique. The youngest Ukrainian president in history, he took office in May 2019 at merely 41 years old–a distinct achievement when compared to an American president’s median age being 55 [or above]. Volodymyr’s family members have been no strangers to war or its impacts; his great-grandparents were killed by German troops during World War II, alongside his grandfather’s three brothers. Born in 1978 to
