Also released as "Message from Ukraine."
"I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride!"
That quote makes a hell of a beginning for Rebekah Koffler's foreword. With those words she sets the tone for Andrew Urban and Chris McLeod's groundbreaking biography of the man who went from being an obscure head-of-state in a country most people couldn't even find on a map, to being the face and voice of the Free World. She doesn't try to pull punches, nor does she try to whitewash the man's history.
Is Zelensky brave, or reckless? ...Is Zelensky a Ukrainian George Washington, ready to forfeit his own life to set his country on the path toward freedom? Or is his bravado driven by a performer's ego and a sense of drama? Perhaps a bit of both..."
-Pages xi - xii
Once the foreword is out of the way, the authors themselves open the book with references to Zelensky's past as an actor (Ronald Reagan is not mentioned by name but comparisons seem to be implied). His Jewish heritage, his lineage from a soldier who fought against Nazi Germany, and the fact that Far Right parties (which secured only 2% of the vote in Ukraine's last election) hated him, are leveraged early on as a "kill-it-before-it-grows" preemptive rebuttal against the "De-Nazification" rhetoric his rival uses to justify the war. And of course, the first chapter ends by noting the 12 separate WELL-documented assassination attempts on Zelensky and his family (that's called a war crime, by the way) in the early days of the war.
This introduction is bracketed perfectly by references to Zelensky's days as a comedian too.
"As an actor and comedian, Volodomyr Zelensky made people laugh."
-xiii
"The comedian remained defiant. He wasn't in this for laughs."
-xiv
Verbal Ninjitsu
One of the things I appreciate about this book is the way tiny facts which decimate the Kremlin's narrative are slipped in without the reader realizing they were coming. For example, the common myth that Zelensky's presidency came about as a result of a "2014 CIA-backed coup" is shredded before it is even addressed, along with yet another stake driven into the corpse of the "Ukro-Nazis" myth.
"Dozens if not hundreds of such jokes riddled the internet, a perfectly apt phenomenon for a country whose president was a successful Jewish comedian in the years before being sworn in on May 20, 2019, with over 72% of the vote."
-page 12.
So unless the CIA consists of some 60 million Ukrainians with Nazi sympathies who stuck around for five years after their so-called "coup" just so they could temporarily forget their Nazi leanings and vote for a Jew, the myth mentioned above was decapitated with casual ease there, and the authors didn't give a Russophilic reader time to raise his mental blinders and come up with a way to ignore it because it was all slipped in as an aside.
The authors repeat this tactic, no longer as a parry but now as a thrust straight for the heart of Russia's credibility, on page 25 with a sudden and not-so-subtle spotlight on Russia-the-De-Nazifier's own admiration for Nazi ideology.
"This [Wagner Group] is an international operation active since 2014, under its granite-faced leader Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin, who named the unit in honor of the German composer... a nod to Utkin's passion for the Third Reich."
I love this writing style, the way the allegations an opponent makes are not even addressed directly, but are gutted with a sidelong blow from a densely-packed bevy of facts and stats, and then either tossed aside like garbage or deflected right down an opponent's throat, while the author goes on straight through them to make their real point. It's a ruthlessly effective way to counter propaganda, and I plan to read this book multiple times studying how the authors do that, so I can emulate it.
Oddly Organized
While the rhetorical style is a lightsaber, the chapter arrangement sometimes feels as clumsy and random as a stormtrooper's blaster carbine. For instance, the chapter detailing Zelensky's life before his acting career doesn't begin until more than halfway through the book. It falls right between a chapter listing the consequences Russia suffered as a result of the invasion (before) and a chapter entitled "Servant of the People," which explains how the name of Zelensky's TV political satire became his campaign slogan (1).
In another example, the book has a chapter that gives a detailed look at the precise terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and like most chapters of the book, it starts off with a mean right-hook in the first sentence.
"In the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Articles 1, 2 and 6 of the Budapest memorandum clearly provide the US and the UK with legitimate grounds - may, an obligation - to engage in military action to protect Ukraine."
-Page 123
See the way the author just casually tosses out a reminder of the US and UK's treaty obligations to join the war on behalf of Ukraine? There's the razor-sharp writing style I mentioned. And yet, this chapter is placed right after a chapter examining Zelensky's former TV role, and before a chapter exploring the meaning of the "Z" symbol Russia has adopted for the war.
Why there?
If there's a coherent A-to-B-to-C thread there, I don't see it.
No Rose-Colored Glasses
One of the most common allegations leveled against Zelensky (or really any head-of-state these days) is that he is a "puppet of the rich." The book does not try to deflect these allegations. It acknowledges them, beginning with his close relationship with Ukrainian entertainment mogul Ihor Kolomoisky and the consistent rumors that the TV Channel owned by Kolomoisky and directed by Zelensky, Kvartal 95, used its influence to sway the 2019 election (page 96). The fact that it was this channel which filed the registration for the "Servant of the People" political party in 2018 (page 97) is not swept under the rug.
Zelensky's refusal to debate his opponent until two days before the election is also not treated as a dirty secret. Rather, the authors shrug and regard it as a sneaky political play, delaying a showdown Zelensky felt confident he could win, just long enough that it would be fresh in everyone's minds at the polls.
This ties in with the running theme of "yeah, he's a bit of a drama queen but so were George Patton and Winston Churchill" that slips and slides its way through the novel. The authors seem to be saying "in war you need an orator to rally people around the flag, and who is a better orator than an actor?"
So Who Should Read It?
Well, historians years from now, with the benefit of decades of hindsight and a lifetime to pore through archives and dig up tidbits of letters, will likely write far more exhaustive biographies of Volodomyr Zelensky. As is the case with any leader, some of these will be more favorable than others. And this biography, written in haste by men who, like most of us, had never heard of Zelensky before the world's eyes turned to the Russian troops amassed on his border (and need we mention the inherent dangers in attempting to write a biography of someone whose life is not yet finished) will probably be forgotten by then, as someone else writes a heftier and more definitive tome about the life of the jester-turned-king who defied a spy-turned-czar.
But until then...
...This book remains the most thorough, accurate and succinct biography I have yet seen of Zelensky. I would recommend it to anyone outside of Ukraine whose life is touched by the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and for the record, that's most of us).
(1) Basically, imagine if Arnold the Governator used "I'll be back" as a re-election slogan.