As if he had the power to travel through time and space without leaving Kiev, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has traveled through different centuries and countries to present his demands to legislators of at least 11 nationalities.
At the head of the nation under threat from one of the greatest military powers on the planet, the former comedian raised to institutional politics uses his media skills and a robust package of historical references to defend his cause in front of heads of state with some potential to change directions. of war.
US lawmakers Zelensky evoked 9/11, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and took the liberty of adapting Martin Luther King’s maxim (“I have a dream”). In the UK, he quoted Shakespeare and paraphrased Winston Churchill — to whom many have wanted to compare him.
In Germany, he told Bundestag members that they are facing a new Berlin Wall, which, unlike the structure torn down in 1989, divides Europe “between freedom and slavery” and “gets stronger with every bomb that falls.” in Ukraine.
“He is a man of clichés”, analyzes Pedro Costa Júnior, political scientist and researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP). “Sometimes he feels like he feels like he’s in a superhero movie and throws lines that could have come out of the mouths of Mel Gibson or Tom Cruise.”
The choices are strategic and reveal the attempt to establish empathetic links between what is happening in Ukraine today and the historical memories of the nations that stop to listen to Zelensky.
“There is a desire to collectivize the war and make it a responsibility that goes beyond the country and its people”, says Luiz Alberto de Farias, a professor at USP and a specialist in public opinion.
Addressing the Canadian Parliament, for example, the Ukrainian president called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by his first name and, in the absence of stronger historical references, appealed to the present.
“Imagine that at 4 am each of you hear explosions. Terrible explosions. Justin, imagine that you hear it and that your children hear it. They hug you and ask, ‘What happened, Dad?'” he said, seeking to create in the interlocutors’ minds the image of cities like Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver being bombed by an imaginary enemy.
In Italy, Zelensky also asked parliamentarians to imagine Rome and Genoa under military attack. In France, he compared the scene of Mariupol – a Ukrainian city besieged by Russia and today practically completely destroyed – to the “ruins of Verdum”.
“As in the photos from the First World War, which I’m sure every one of you has seen,” Zelensky told those present at the National Assembly in Paris, shortly before also evoking the motto of the French Revolution (liberty, equality and fraternity).
If they work for headlines and to draw attention to the very real humanitarian crisis in several Ukrainian cities, Zelensky’s performances don’t necessarily have the same effect on those who actually have decision-making power, according to experts.
“This approach has had an impact on public opinion, especially because part of the mainstream media has embraced the idea that Zelensky would be a kind of savior,” says Farias. In practice, however, “the reasoning of European heads of government is pragmatic, objective. It is not a ‘mise-en-scène’ that will make a difference to the achievement of a possible entry of Ukraine into the European Union, for example.”
For Costa Júnior, the West plays a kind of game with Zelenski. “They give support by opening the doors of Congresses, applauding, raising Ukrainian flags”, says the researcher. “But they don’t send an American soldier — or German, English or French — to fight alongside the Ukrainians.”
This criticism, by the way, Zelensky himself makes of the allies. With each new speech, the demands are reiterated: the creation of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, the sending of weapons and military equipment that make Kiev’s defense more robust, and the imposition of tougher and more constant sanctions against Russia, among other claims.
It so happens that the movements of the Western powers are calculated to prevent Russia from seeing them as direct military interference in the conflict, which would multiply the risk of the situation expanding borders and becoming a Third World War.
In times of disinformation battles and warlike content going viral on TikTok, the Ukrainian, in any case, continues to bet on social networks and the media front — since in the most literal, military term, his chances of victory are more questionable. “Putin’s media war already lost as soon as the invasion started. Russia was really cancelled,” says Costa Júnior.
Even when not resorting to the host country’s own memory, Zelensky makes use of the rhetoric-history combo to defend his arguments. In Japan, he deviated from references that could be considered obvious, such as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and recounted the domestic tragedy of Chernobyl – with which, of course, the Japanese identify, given the episode of the nuclear power plant. Fukushima, hit by a tsunami in 2011.
So far, the president of Ukraine has not spoken in any Latin American country, although in Brazil Eliziane Gama (Cidadania-MA) has submitted a request to the Senate to invite Zelensky to speak to Congress.
Costa Júnior recognizes the penetration that Zelenski’s speeches had in public opinion, but believes that the effect may not be permanent. “Heroes artificially constructed by the West don’t usually work very well. Zelensky was left to his own devices. Or his own misfortune.”
