Character And Destiny

On one level, the war in Ukraine is a study in character. Eugene Robinson writes:

Perhaps any Russian leader would feel some measure of frustration or even rage at the way their nation’s status has diminished since the Cold War ended. Perhaps anyone calling the shots in Moscow would resent seeing former Soviet republics turn their backs on Russia and embrace the West. Perhaps any master of the Kremlin would believe, deep inside, that Ukraine really is an integral part of Russia.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin holds those views with a tragic intensity. He imagines a Western plot to humiliate Moscow and deny Russia the superpower status it deserves, and he appears to take this grievous insult personally.

Putin has an unusually high tolerance for risk — since World War II, sovereign nations simply do not invade and conquer their neighbors — and he is almost inhumanly callous to civilian casualties, as evidenced by the way he reduced the Chechen city of Grozny to rubble in 1999 when he waged war as prime minister.

Several commentators here have pointed to Russia's humiliation as the driving force behind this war. Russia's greatest novelist, Leo Tolstoy, would probably agree. But to understand why things are as they are, you have to understand Putin:

While attempts at long-distance psychoanalysis are generally worthless, recent images of Putin meeting with high-ranking aides are undeniably weird — Putin keeping them at an unnatural distance and speaking to them as if they were schoolchildren. A different Russian president might have been given a more realistic assessment of how ready his military was to conduct a large-scale invasion, how fiercely Ukrainians would resist and how the international community might react. Putin either didn’t ask to hear such truth or decided to ignore it.

 There is, however,  more than one character involved in this war:

Perhaps any Ukrainian president would have bravely resisted the Russian invasion, but it’s hard to imagine anyone else matching the way Volodymyr Zelensky has performed. Zelensky’s defiance and bravery have rallied Ukrainian soldiers and civilians to fight tooth and nail for every square inch of their homeland. And it is no overstatement to say that his decision to put his life on the line by remaining in Kyiv has inspired support for the Ukrainian cause around the world.

Who could have imagined that a former comedian, famous for winning the local version of “Dancing With the Stars” and playing an accidental Ukrainian president on television, would so rise to the occasion and become such a hero?

“You have to remember that he is a performer, and performance is a big part of this,” former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr., who knows Zelensky well, told me this week. Indeed, Zelensky knows not just what to say but also how to say it for maximum impact. He understands the visual impact of the olive-drab military T-shirts he wears and the backdrops he chooses for his social media messages.

Zelensky has single-handedly changed the trajectory of the war. He may not be able to change its outcome, but statues of him will be erected in Ukrainian exile communities around the world — and someday, I am confident, in Kyiv.

Character does make a difference. It can inspire and it can destroy. That dichotomy is playing out in Ukraine.

Image: Newsweek