INTRODUCTION

As an actor and comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky made people laugh.

As President of Ukraine, a country under siege from Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the European Parliament where he was given a standing ovation and reduced a translator to tears.

President Zelensky’s plea for support from Europe in the face of deadly bombardment from Vladimir Putin’s Russia was no laughing matter.

The man who once played the piano with his genitals for five minutes to howls of laughter pleaded for Europe and the West to stand by his still fledgling democracy as the Russian military laid siege to Ukrainian cities, killing civilians in the process.

There was one big stumbling block to the US-backed NATO alliance joining in — fear of starting World War III.

President Joe Biden said he would defend NATO to the point of World War III, but that he wouldn’t risk touching off a wider conflict by fighting Russia in Ukraine and ruled out establishing a no-fly zone that Russia would regard as an act of war.

President Biden told Americans: “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in, American pilots and American crews, just understand. Don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War Three, okay?”

One of Putin’s pretexts was to put down Ukraine’s supposed move along the path to Nazism.

His action was said to be aimed at protecting citizens in the newly recognized (by Russia) regions in the Donbas and “demilitarizing” and “de-Nazifying” Ukraine itself.

The Nazi pretext just didn’t seem to hold water. To begin, far-right candidates garnered just 2% of the Ukrainian vote in 2019 elections.

More likely it was about trying to renew the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And of course, Ukraine’s resources would be worth having — iron ore, manganese, coal, bauxite, natural gas and petroleum among them.

One of President Zelensky’s first tweets (social media now a major instrument in waging war) as Russia launched its invasion on February 24, 2022 was: “Russia treacherously attacked our state in the morning, as Nazi Germany did in #2WW years. As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history. (Russia) has embarked on a path of evil, but (Ukraine) is defending itself & won’t give up its freedom no matter what Moscow thinks.”

They are not the words of a Nazi-sympathizer.

Zelensky would hardly identity with the Hitler regime whose aim was extermination of Jews. He was born into a Jewish family and was the first Jewish President of his country.

The history of Russia and Ukraine have been linked for centuries, since Kyiv (Kiev as used in Russia) became the capital of the ancient state of Rus. They also have closely related languages, and many people in the two countries have family links.

In the early 20th century, the two nations and nearby Belarus formed the Slav core of the communist Soviet Union.

Ukraine and Russia stayed aligned after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, but as the 21st century began, Ukraine sought closer ties with Europe.

And that particularly irked the Russian President.

The writing was on the wall for further aggression in 2014 when Ukraine’s pro-Russian government was toppled, leading Russia to annex Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula and make clear its support for the separatist insurgents in Ukraine’s east.

To many observers in Europe, it was only a matter of time until Putin ordered the full invasion of Ukraine. Putin had always described Ukrainians and Russians as one people, ironic when his military started killing Ukrainian civilians as the much-anticipated invasion began when tanks emblazoned with the letter “Z” rolled into Ukraine.

President Zelensky told German newspaper Die Zelt: “The invasion was no surprise to me, but the brutality was. What the Russian soldiers are doing to the civilians is more than I can comprehend. The bombs they’re dropping on apartment buildings. The missile systems they’re using to shell residential areas. Those are war crimes.”

On March 1, 2022, President Zelensky made an impassioned address to the European Parliament: “We want our children to live on. It seems to me that this is fair. Yesterday, 16 children died. And again, President Putin will say that this is some kind of an ‘operation,’ and that they are bombing only our military infrastructure. Where are our children? At what military plants do they work? Which rockets do they operate? Maybe they drive our tanks? You killed 16 children!”

Putin upped the ante: He warned of consequences for Western countries interfering and put his nuclear attack capability on alert. The West (and NATO) however would not put “boots on the ground” in fear of starting World War III.

President Zelensky told the European parliament: “We are simply fighting for our land and our freedom, and believe me, despite the fact that all the big cities of our state are now under blockade, no one will penetrate our freedom and state. Believe me. Every square today, whatever it is called, will be referred to as Freedom Square. In every city of our state. Nobody will break us, we stand strong, we are Ukrainians.”

Just what would the end game be? There was no confidence around the world that there would be a peaceful solution. The popular belief was that the end would come with Ukraine — or parts of it — falling under Russian rule, either by capitulation or concession. No one was predicting a peaceful Russian retreat.

The possibility of a short war dissipated when Ukraine offered a level of resistance Russia appeared not to expect and a drawn-out conflict was considered most likely, even spreading into neighboring countries.

Another possibility that had some backers was the ousting of President Putin in Russia, though how that might occur would depend on a massive uprising or even assassination.

Assassination was something on the mind of Ukrainians — reports said there were at least 12 assassination attempts on President Zelensky’s life in the first three weeks of the conflict.

The comedian remained defiant. He wasn’t in this for laughs.