In the space of five years Volodymyr Zelenskyy has undergone more transformations than most politicians see in a lifetime.
First he was the comedian-turned-president, then he was a wartime hero in military fatigues, and now he risks slipping into the role of embattled leader.
His public fallout with commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi has come at the worst possible time. Ukraine finds itself outgunned three-to-one on the battlefield against its Russian aggressors while the U.S., its financial lifeline, is holding out on aid.
As the war enters its third painful year, Ukraine’s leadership is fighting along an 930-mile front with the Russians, fighting to win crucial supplies from allies and fighting among itself. It wants to avoid being forced to negotiate unpalatable peace terms, even though the pressure to do so is building.
Zelenskyy reads, to his allies, as stressed now as he has been at any point since the invasion. That was the assessment of a senior European diplomat who speaks to him regularly and who, like others interviewed for this article asked to remain anonymous.
There is still some mystery around the Zaluzhnyi incident. Was he fired? Did he resign? The fallout between Ukraine’s two most prominent figures amounts to the biggest internal shakeup since the invasion. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is grinning, enjoying free airtime with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Both events played out separately, but within hours of each other, and the optics are hard to ignore because they underline not only the challenges of rebooting the war but the alternate fortunes of two key antagonists.
Putin’s win in March elections is a foregone conclusion and at this point he will have been in power longer than any Russian leader since Peter the Great, a figure he likes to compare himself to. Zelenskyy, who came into office as an agent of change, is skipping elections this year. But even though Ukrainians won’t get to vote, politics is back.
One thing remains unchanged: the Ukrainian president hates the word "stalemate.”
It’s a loaded term, one that sits at the core of his spat with someone worshiped among his soldiers, a former army chief who can take a lot of credit for the resistance few thought Ukraine capable of when it was plunged into the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.
Zelenskyy rebuked Zaluzhnyi when he dared use it — "stalemate” — in an interview with The Economist last November. It seemed for many a statement of fact, but the terminology was sensitive at a time when neither side will consider a negotiated end to the war.
Several western officials in regular contact with the Ukrainian president say that victory remains the only outcome Zelenskiy will countenance.
The president, after a winter in which thousands more deaths haven’t altered the front-line, seemed to break the ‘stalemate’ taboo himself in a recent interview with Italian television broadcaster RAI. Yet even there, his office was angry at what they called a mistranslation — they insisted he said "stagnation.”
Whatever you call it, two years into the war Ukraine’s attempts to repel its Russian invaders isn’t going to plan.
Ukrainians can’t shake off the memory of when Zelenskyy, doubting U.S. intelligence reports of an imminent invasion, promised there would still be picnics by May. They are as patriotic as ever, but with the third May approaching the war’s duration is sapping morale. The army says it needs to recruit more men.
In the first part of the war, the country "was running on adrenaline” said Orysia Lutsevych, who runs the Ukraine program at Chatham House. "But now it is a completely different situation. There is disappointment, there are bitter feelings.”
The outgoing general commands great personal support. Some Western diplomats privately speculate that his popularity was getting to Zelenskyy, who one official called thin-skinned.
But people familiar with the military leadership say that at least part of the split revolves around Zelenskyy’s preference for a bolder military plan, which is at odds with what the more cautious Zaluzhnyi had planned for the months ahead.
One aide said that Zaluzhnyi even had a hand in picking his replacement.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, who commands the country’s land forces, may be willing to cleave tighter to the president’s military goals but is mistrusted by some on the battlefield, who see him as more ruthless than his predecessor. By contrast with Zaluzhnyi he speaks Ukrainian with an accent, having grown up in Russia.
When Zelenskyy was elected five years ago he became the nation’s first leader whose party held a majority in parliament. But recently he hasn’t always been getting his way during its sessions, which now regularly leak out from behind closed doors. It has been at odds on the question of how to replenish troops fatigued by the war’s demands.
Along with politics in the highest echelons of government, media criticism has returned. Former commercial rivals still cooperate in a round-the-clock broadcast know as the Telemarathon, but viewership has dropped, and the audience flocks to unregulated social media instead. In recent weeks, the uncertainty around the president’s reboot has uncorked debate over how the war is being waged.
Zelenskyy’s relationship with the media was strained even before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. When that began journalists were told by their president that they’re also fighting a war — and he’s made clear that he resents friendly fire.
Gone is the youthful demeanor of the president’s first years on the job. His citizens remember the man who refused to put his comedy career on hold as he campaigned to become their youngest-ever president; one who once delivered a televised interview from an exercise bike, not letting his voice betray the effort of working hard to stay in the same place.
Now his hair is graying at the temples. Back in the early day of the war he warned NATO allies to stop playing "ping pong” over aid, but now in his private moments he has become even better at table tennis.
The foreign visitors — Boris Johnson, Ursula von der Leyen, Angelina Jolie — don’t come as often as they used to. Instead Zelenskyy travels abroad, like he did last month, to Davos and the Baltics, to plead his country’s case.
Foreign officials notice a shift in the tone of these visits. He went from arguing that Ukraine will lose without their help to appealing to their instinct to support the winning side. His team remember how, after Ukraine successfully repelled troops encircling Kyiv, the U.S. overcame its reluctance to send over precision HIMARs weapons. Lately, he’s been pointing out that it’s cheaper for allies to fund Ukraine than to risk fighting Russia on their own territory.
As the third year of war approaches, his inner circle knows much has changed. They noticed President Joe Biden’s narrative shift from as-long-as-you-need to as-long-as-we-can. They are also attuned to what a return of Donald Trump will mean.
The two men have history, with Zelenskyy playing a starring role in Trump’s first impeachment scandal. One Zelenskyy aide said his team aren’t too gloomy about the prospect of a Trump presidency. He pointed out that back then Zelenskyy had leverage over Trump but chose not to use it. All that remains to be seen.
His allies acknowledge that Zelenskyy is talismanic. They say none of his predecessors would have been able to rally international support to the same degree.
As one senior European official put it: not having him at the helm would make things for Ukraine a lot harder.
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