From Russian plots to assassinate him in the early days of the war to the enforced separation from his wife and two children, who mostly see him these days on television, Zelensky has had to endure personal sacrifice and constant threat as the face of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia. Unlike Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who after a visit to the Oval Office, wrote on X: “I miss you already, President T.”, Zelensky “is incapable of bowing and scraping … he can’t kowtow, he doesn’t do humble and meek”, said Simon Shuster, an American journalist of Russian and Ukrainian heritage who grew close to Zelensky while writing his biography of the president, The Showman, published last year. Whatever the outcome of the latest flurry of diplomacy and back-channel bargaining, the stakes could not be higher for Zelensky, whose improbable rise from sitcom star to global statesman is already the stuff of legend — and films: the Cannes festival billed its opening on Tuesday as “Ukraine Day” with three documentaries about the conflict, including Zelensky, the story of the leader.
Author: Matthew Campbell
Published at: 2025-05-18 22:07:39
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