Wearing his trademark olive green, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Germany’s parliament on Thursday. “I appeal to you when Russia is bombing our cities, destroying everything in Ukraine,” he said.
“You are like behind the wall again. Not the Berlin Wall. But in the middle of Europe. Between freedom and slavery. And this wall grows stronger with each bomb that falls on our land, on Ukraine.”
While he was unusually critical of those he was addressing—Zelenskyy cut straight to the chase, hammering Germany’s leaders over the country’s ongoing business ties with Russia—it fit right in with what has become a familiar pattern: the casual-yet-serious garb, the evocative phrases, and the tailored invocations of iconic historical moments.
“He’s basically using all the tools that all great speakers use, but he’s just adapting them to the age of Twitter,” said Lindsay Williams, founder of British communications consultancy the Media Coach. “He’s brilliant.”
Williams compared Zelenskyy’s choice of attire with Steve Jobs’ black turtlenecks, saying it was a consistent example of what would, in the commercial world, be called branding.
When the invasion began and Zelenskyy started shooting videos to maintain Ukrainian morale, his olive-green T-shirts and fleeces—“combat-colored but not a uniform,” she noted—served as a way of telling his audience that he was like them. Now he’s sticking with the image.
“What he’s saying to the rest of the world is that ‘This is not about me,’” Williams said. “It’s such a poetic contrast to Putin, who is so much about formality and having his generals with their medals on display.”
Of course, lawmakers are quite a different audience from the Ukrainian public—hence Zelenskyy’s carefully selected historical references.
For Germany’s Bundestag, it was the Nazis, the Berlin Wall, and the Berlin Airlift.
For the U.S. Congress, it was 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, with a mention of Mount Rushmore thrown in for good measure.
For the British Houses of Parliament, it was a call back to Winston Churchill: “We shall fight in the seas, we shall fight in the air, we shall defend our land, whatever the cost may be…We shall not surrender!”
The Poles heard a reference to the 2010 Smolensk air disaster that claimed the lives of President Lech Kaczyński and others. Zelenskyy even invited Canada’s parliament to consider the image of Russian missiles hitting Toronto’s CN Tower.
“He does what all good public speakers do—he looks at his audience and thinks, ‘How can I make them relate to me?’” said Williams. “He changes his references in a very obvious way, but he does it well, and reminds the audience that the Ukrainians and the British are alike, and the Americans and Ukrainians are alike.”
Leader for the Twitter and TikTok generation
Williams is also impressed at the quality of Zelenskyy’s sound bites—think “I don’t need a ride, I need more ammunition”—particularly given the fact he’s at war. Throw in his use of well-edited and emotive videos, and he is very much a leader “for the Twitter and TikTok generation,” Williams said.
This isn’t just helpful for reaching the Western public, she added: “I suspect he is also thinking he wants these messages to reach Russian millennials in particular.”
But when it comes to his addresses to Western lawmakers, how effective are Zelenskyy’s pleas?
“He is doing a good job,” said Joachim Krause, a political scientist and the academic director of the Institute for Security Policy at Germany’s Kiel University.
“He was an actor, and as such, he knows how to communicate and bring over his messages. The probable thing is, at least with regard to the German parliament, [the speech] didn’t yield anything.”
Indeed, while members of the Bundestag gave Zelenskyy a standing ovation at the end of his speech, they did not go on to debate what he had just asked for, namely stronger sanctions. They instead returned to the day’s agenda and began discussing lawmakers’ birthdays.
Similarly, the Americans may have given Zelenskyy kamikaze drones, portable Stinger antiaircraft systems, and other smaller arms, but they did not agree to his requests for fighter jets and large antiaircraft systems—and certainly not for the establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which the White House claims would lead to NATO-Russia clashes that could spark a new world war.
“The problem is, with Germany, the government is not interested in any kind of so-called escalation,” said Krause, who believes direct Western intervention is possible without triggering World War III, as long as it is “clearly directed at defending Ukraine and towards humanitarian operations.”
“They were aware of what kind of demands he would make, and they decided in advance they wouldn’t give in to these demands…I think this was a futile effort from the beginning, and this government is hiding behind the U.S. Government, [which is] extremely cautious.”
A message to the American people
Krause reckons Zelenskyy’s plea to Congress was aimed not only at the lawmakers there, but also a wider American audience.
“The congresspeople and senators have to listen to the people on the street,” he said. “More and more people cannot understand why the Western world is not intervening in the Ukraine, in light of these cruel attacks by Russia.”
Williams highlighted the video Zelenskyy showed the U.S. Congress at the end of his address, with images of happy, peaceful times segueing to images of destruction and desperation, then closing with the plea, “Close the sky over Ukraine.”
“I don’t know who edited and put that piece together, but most of it was crowdsourced, and while there was a little death and destruction, it was much more centered on emotion than horror,” she said. “It’s a very sophisticated use of video. This is very much a leader for the current age.”
Never miss a story: Follow your favorite topics and authors to get a personalized email with the journalism that matters most to you.