Time announced on Wednesday, hailing the 44-year-old Ukrainian president for his courage in the face of Russia’s invasion and for inspiring Ukrainians to remain steadfast and resist Russia’s full-scale invasion, which it launched in late February.
In a feature story on Zelensky, the magazine said: “Zelensky’s success as a wartime leader has relied on the fact that courage is contagious. It spread through Ukraine’s political leadership in the first days of the invasion, as everyone realized the President had stuck around.
“If that seems like a natural thing for a leader to do in a crisis, consider historical precedent. Only six months earlier, the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani—a far more experienced leader than Zelensky—fled his capital as Taliban forces approached.
“In 2014, one of Zelensky’s predecessors, Viktor Yanukovych, ran away from Kyiv as protesters closed in on his residence; he still lives in Russia today. Early in the Second World War, the leaders of Albania, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Yugoslavia, among others, fled the advance of the German Wehrmacht and lived out the war in exile.”
On the Ukrainian president turning down a request by the US government to evacuate him and his family to a secure location in the early days of the invasion and choosing to stay and fight alongside Ukrainians, Time noted: “There wasn’t much in Zelensky’s biography to predict his willingness to stand and fight. He had never served in the military or shown much interest in its affairs.
“He had only been President since April 2019. His professional instincts derived from a lifetime as an actor on the stage, a specialist in improv comedy, and a producer in the movie business.”
Describing Zelensky’s decision to remain in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv and rally his country as “fateful”, Time’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal remarked that Time’s decision to honour Zelensky was “the most clear-cut in memory.”
