It has now been more than four years since we launched The Rest Is Politics. The somewhat more significant event around that time was Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelensky was already becoming a regular feature of news bulletins around the world, his face and voice becoming as recognisable as the leaders of far bigger and more powerful countries such as the United States.
Since the beginning of the show, Zelensky has figured large, both as an example of genuinely courageous leadership and superb communications skills. He has been a war leader in the most unimaginably difficult circumstances for every minute of every day of the more than four years which have passed.
The Ukrainian comedy actor-turned-President has been on our list of targets for The Rest Is Politics Leading for a while now.
Finally, it was on Easter Monday afternoon, with my office at home turned into a mini TV studio, and three members of the team giving up their bank holiday, where we sat waiting for the country’s coat of arms and the words “President of Ukraine” on my screen to be replaced by the face of President Zelensky.
When he arrived, he was warm and friendly, and that mode was on display for the next hour and more. His energy is phenomenal, and whenever he had a really big point to make it was almost as if he was coming out of the screen at me.
This man has been living under constant fear of assassination, never has a day off, has to travel week after week to maintain diplomatic support, all while daily receiving reports of death and devastation and trying to raise a family including a 13-year-old son, who in common with all Ukrainian children, is becoming an adult before his time says his dad.
A lot of leaders, Donald Trump for example, like to make everything about themselves. Zelensky was the opposite. He said his mother finds it harder than he does seeing how he has to live. They speak every day. Sometimes he forgets to call. She never does.
“If I am not answering, by the way, I have a problem! I have 10, 20 phone calls from her. So that is why it is better to answer first [time],” he told me during our interview.
Remembering the day of the invasion itself, he said of course he felt fear, he is human, but he “pushed emotion to one side” to focus on the steps he had to take, buoyed by support from political and military leaders around the world.
Given all he was dealing with, I worried he might get irritated at questions about his personal history. Far from it. He said he loved his previous life. He clearly loved talking about it too.
Of course, the bulk of the interview was about the huge issues of war and peace. There were so many fascinating moments. You won’t be surprised to know I was delighted to hear him say he felt the UK should be part of the wave of enlargement of the EU that he hopes will include Ukraine.
He went further though.
He wants them to be joined by Turkey and Norway and sees the combined military power of Ukraine, Britain, Norway and Turkey as a force that can stand up to the Russian army. And judging by the laugh it provoked, he loved my idea that Canada might join too. “Mark [Carney] is great.”
He clearly worries about Trump’s repeated rhetorical attacks against Nato. He is worried that the US war in Iran and the broader Middle East crisis will take focus away from Ukraine, resources and weapons too.
It partly explains his visit to the Gulf, whose countries want to learn from Ukraine about their countering of Iranian drones, assistance Zelensky hopes can be turned into new and important strategic alliances.
He avoided my invitations to whack Trump directly, but he clearly feels the US is naive in thinking Putin can be trusted. “They spend too much time together,” he says referring to the President’s negotiators Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Putin.
That line came in answer to my question: why can’t they see Putin as most of us do, and why can’t they see that it would be politically impossible for Zelensky to give up land on which so many lives have been lost, where so many Ukrainians still live, and whose constitutional change would be rejected in a referendum, and possibly provoke a civil war?
He insists Putin cannot “win” the war, that he now knows he can’t take the whole of Ukraine, that it is not going well on the battlefield, a view backed by a recent report from MI6.
“I understand Putin 100 per cent,” he says, again drawing a difference with Trump and his hapless (my word, not his) negotiators Witkoff and Kushner.
They believe Putin, he thinks, because they don’t want to think that he lies to them. But Russian lies, they should understand, go back to the Budapest Agreement of 1994, in which the US, Russia and the UK gave sovereignty and border security guarantees in exchange for Ukraine handing their nukes to Russia. “They got our nuclear weapons. We got nothing.” The feeling of betrayal is palpable.
And it was hard not to sense frustration with Trump in a succession of comments throughout the interview.
The Trump-Putin Alaska summit, he says, was “a success… for Putin”. If there is ever a ceasefire it has to be “for a long time, not just a week of celebration”. Ukraine passed on intelligence to the US which showed Russia was helping Iran with its targeting, including of US bases. “There was no reaction.”
With Vice President JD Vance due to head to Budapest to support Maga hero Viktor Orbán in this week’s Hungarian election at the time of our conversation, Zelensky suggested he was “not sure it was helpful” (and he meant not helpful to Orbán).
I found the last few minutes of the interview especially revealing, and moving. I often felt that Tony Blair was at his loneliest when taking decisions which led to the death of UK soldiers. Ukraine has lost so many young men to the Russian onslaught and I asked Zelensky if he had to harden himself in the face of constantly being given casualty figures.
“You can never get used to hearing of the deaths,” he said. “And you mustn’t.”
He spoke of the many times he had given posthumous awards to the families of soldiers who had been killed. They often cried. He often hugged them. But he said he always looked them in the eye and thanked them for their sacrifice.
“We live because they gave their lives,” he said. It was the only time in a long and good-humoured conversation that he looked genuinely sad.
In an era when so many of our leaders disappoint, and so many lie, cheat and con their way to the top, he really is a hero for our times. He deserves far more support, both from the US and from Europe, not to mention all the fence-sitters, than he gets. Yet, even without it, he gives a convincing display of thinking he is winning.
Listen to the interview from Thursday 6pm on The Rest Is Politics Leading. A version of this piece was first published in The Rest Is Politics newsletter. For articles from Alastair and Rory Stewart, as well as a weekly newsletter, sign up here.
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