How Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy swapped careers, donned khakis and remade himself once again into a leader the world is turning to.
Hunched on a chair in a protected location, watched over by security men cradling automatic weapons and with a huddle of media in front of him, Zelenskyy looks tired and on edge.
His face is a grimace, his hands stretched wide as he makes his point, leaning towards cameras and microphones dressed in now-trademark khaki T-shirt, jacket and pants.
"Words are more important than shots … Sit down with me to negotiate," he says, speaking directly to Russia's President, Vladimir Putin.
"I don't bite. What are you afraid of?"
It is now three weeks since Russia's tanks breached the borders of Ukraine. Already hundreds of Ukrainians have died and vastly more have fled — their apartment blocks abandoned, blackened and ragged with damage from days of bombardment — as Russia's military assault carves its relentless path towards the capital, Kyiv.
But just as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has torn apart his country, war has remade Zelenskyy.
A wartime president
The man who almost brought down an American president, after his phone call with Donald Trump led to impeachment, has transformed his own sagging popularity within Ukraine as he steps up to battle the leader of another superpower: Russia's Vladimir Putin.
His stoic refusal to leave Kyiv despite valid reason to believe he is "the Kremlin's Target #1" has won him respect and even awe.
There have been comparisons with Britain's WWII prime minister Winston Churchill and Zelenskyy’s image has been turned into viral memes. Canada's parliament gave him an ovation; his address to the European Parliament left his translator in tears and his speech to Britain's House of Commons marked the first time a foreign leader addressed MPs in the chamber.
Many have described Zelenskyy as a hero.
While Churchill walked the streets of London during the Blitz, addressing crowds in person to prove he had not abandoned the city and its citizens, Zelenskyy has stayed mostly hidden in secret bunkers or sand-bagged basements.
He constantly rallies the exhausted Ukrainian people via videos and updates posted to social media where he has more than 14 million followers on Instagram alone.
"We are all here," he says, in a moving and grainy video, filmed under cover of darkness in central Kyiv on February 24, soon after Russia's invasion began.
"We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land. That is it. That's all I wanted to tell you."
Behind him, a group of Zelenskyy's closest confidants stand with grave expressions, dressed in the same plain khaki clothing that speaks of war, but also of solidarity.
The purpose of the eerie, riveting footage is clear: Zelenskyy, 44, a married father of two, wants to show Ukrainians that his leadership understands their fears and has not abandoned them to Russia's onslaught.
Changing political fortune
Yet just weeks ago, Zelenskyy's stratospheric rise in popularity within Ukraine, alongside the global notoriety and respect he built in mere days, was far from guaranteed.
Before Russia's invasion, Zelenskyy was irritating Western leaders as he downplayed the threat of a Russian attack, in the face of urgent warnings from analysts.
Zelenskyy's short time as President — following his 2019 election — has been an approval ratings rollercoaster. The landslide support that ushered him into the job with an anti-corruption platform and 73 per cent of the vote has been steadily eroding.
In 2020, Zelenskyy’s political party suffered badly in regional elections. And as recently as October last year, his personal approval rating among Ukrainians appeared to be in freefall, tumbling from 33.3 per cent to 24.7 per cent in a month.
Last year, Zelenskyy was facing heat for failing to deliver on his anti-corruption reforms, favouring what many considered to be flimsy, populist solutions.
Others were nonplussed with a sense he had grown too close to Ukraine’s oligarchs, notably billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskyi, whose TV production company backed Zelenskyy's pre-politics comedy career and supported his election bid. Kolomoyskyi is under investigation in the US.
In an effort to control his image, Zelenskyy even went so far as to ban two critical television networks, with an editorial in The Kyiv Independent newspaper describing him as "dispiritingly mediocre". US think tank the Atlantic Council has argued Zelenskyy had led Ukraine during a "marked decline in official support for liberal social policies".
Importantly, while the grinding, relentless Russia-backed insurgency continued in Donbas in the east of Ukraine and as the threat of all-out war intensified, Zelenskyy's critics believed their president was too weak against Putin's threats. He had made too many compromises and failed to devote sufficient resources to securing the country's eastern border with Russia.
An outsider at home
Zelenskyy knows his enemy. For years, conflict has simmered in Donbas in Ukraine's east and attempts to manage it have dominated his presidency.
More than 13,000 people have died there over the past eight years and the UN has accused both Russia and Ukraine of human rights violations, as well as breaking the 2015 Minsk peace agreement.
The region gave Putin his pretext to invade, arguing these governments had asked for Moscow's protection.
Yet look beyond Zelenskyy's experience of governing, however effectively or ineffectively, and you find a man with more specific insights into Russian culture and language than the presidents who have gone before him.
Zelenskyy grew up speaking Russian: a boy from a Ukrainian family, living in the Russian-speaking city of Kryvyi Rih, or "Crooked Horn" in English translation.
His father, Oleksandr, was a professor of cybernetics. His mother, Rimma, an engineer.
But the Zelenskyy family were not just Ukrainians in a Russian-speaking town. They were Jews in a country where anti-Semitism lingered.
More than 5,000 Jews from Kryvyi Rih were killed during the Holocaust and thousands more fled. It was a period rarely spoken of and never commemorated during the Soviet era, when Zelenskyy was a child.
In many ways Zelenskyy must have felt like an outsider — speaking Russian in everyday life, downplaying his religious identity — acting hard to earn his belonging as he forged a path in this working-class town in south-eastern Ukraine, famous for its steel mill, its abandoned mines and its crime.
As a politician, he has leveraged his understanding of Ukraine's divisions by promoting a political platform that sought to unite the country.
His background has also been useful in highlighting the inconsistencies in Russia's justification for invasion.
Many of Ukraine's supporters have pointed out that Zelenskyy's Jewish heritage, including a grandfather who fought with the Soviet Army against the Nazis, strips power from Putin's claims his invasion is to "de-Nazify" Ukraine.
It should first of all be acknowledged that the rise of Neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, pre-dating Zelenskyy's presidency, have raised serious concerns from human rights groups, with a 2018 report by Human Rights Watch noting little effective government action. The unfolding war resulting from Russia's invasion is now said to be attracting Neo-Nazis and white supremacists to the fight.
Yet Zelenskyy has vigorously decried the idea that his government is encouraging these groups.
In an effort to influence public opinion in Russia and diffuse Putin's propaganda, Zelenskyy addressed the Nazi claims in his trademark way: bypassing formal channels and instead using a social media post to speak in Russian, directly to the Russian people.
"The Ukraine on your news and Ukraine in real life are two completely different countries," he said. "You are told we are Nazis. But could a people who lost more than 8 million lives in the battle against Nazism support Nazism?"
On February 23, on the eve of Russia's invasion, he said: "Many of you have visited Ukraine. Many of you have relatives here. You know our character, you know our people, and you know our principles. So stop and listen to yourselves, to the voice of reason, to the voice of common sense."
Even Putin himself appears to have learnt from Zelenskyy's direct and personal style, releasing his own video addressing the people of Ukraine, urging them to overthrow their government.
"Take power into your own hands," Putin said days after the invasion. "It looks like it will be easier for us to come to an agreement [with you] than with this gang of drug addicts and Neo-Nazis that has settled in Kyiv and taken hostage the entire Ukrainian people."
A politician with a comedy background
As a teenager growing up in the 1990s, in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Zelenskyy and his friends dreamed of escape. The yearning for something more was a turning point that has defined his life.
While studying law, and in an effort to avoid being sucked into Kryvyi Rih's omnipresent gang culture, at age 19 Zelenskyy joined a comedy troupe and instead tapped into the thriving theatre scene that somehow survived in the city’s rough streets.
With law as his backstop, Zelenskyy went on to forge a spectacular career as a comedian. He added side gigs as the voice of Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian language version of the movie, and as the winner of Ukraine's Dancing with the Stars.
But it is his role as co-founder of comedy production house Kvartal 95 — Quarter 95 — that set his path to the presidency.
Kvartal 95 produced the TV hit Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy plays a high school teacher who becomes president after a video of him denouncing corruption goes viral. The show was hugely popular in Ukraine, attracting more than 20 million viewers.
And it gave Zelenskyy an idea: could he do this for real?
Zelenskyy's inner circle
Beyond the uncanny "life imitates art" parallels (even the name of Zelenskyy’s political party, Servant of the People, mirrors that of his screen character) there is a more important link between Zelenskyy's past life as a comedian and his current one as a president under siege.
It is telling of the esteem Zelenskyy must attract that years later many of those same friends from his comedy days continue to rally around him.
Notwithstanding the criticism he has received for parachuting his comedy mates into significant roles within his administration, there can be little doubt that their loyalty now is priceless.
Most significant is Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy's Presidential Administration. Yermak is the towering, solemn-faced figure that appears over Zelenskyy's left shoulder in his February 24 video post.
Also a law graduate, Yermak went on to become a film producer and befriended Zelenskyy a decade ago as his comedy career was taking off. He is now one of the inner circle, beside Zelenskyy in the network of bunkers and basements where Ukraine's leadership continues to direct the country.
In a passionate open letter printed in the New York Times, Yermak's urgent words underscored just how committed he is to Zelenskyy and to Ukraine.
"I am writing this appeal from a bunker in the capital, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by my side," he wrote. "Even though Mr Zelenskyy and I cannot be physically alongside every brave Ukrainian fighting for this country, our spirit is with them. Every day brings the possibility that our words may be our final ones. We will fight to our last breath."
Managing the message
The skill with which the Zelenskyy camp has pushed and managed its message through close-up selfies and videos shot on the fly feels organic and intimate.
Yet, none of it is accidental.
If Zelenskyy's detractors mocked his seemingly lightweight past as a comedian when he came to power, surely no one can be laughing now.
Those same entertainment skills have been crucial in remaking Zelenskyy into a wartime statesman, crafting and taking control of Ukraine's conflict narrative.
Zelenskyy's now-famous one-liners, many adding wry comedy bite to devastatingly serious topics — "I need ammunition, not a ride"; "I don’t want Ukraine's history to be a legend about 300 Spartans. I want peace" — showcase his skill in performing for the camera and have marked him out as an exemplary communicator.
At a time when Zelenskyy has few methods for leading his people beyond his smartphone, this connection to social media platforms and viral memes provides him with a battlefront advantage that Russia cannot hope to overcome.
Keeping hope alive
As three weeks of war closes in, military analysts are surprised by the success Ukraine has maintained in fighting Russia.
Yet, with two nuclear sites captured by Putin's forces, the country and its key cities ringed and under bombardment by Russian troops, Western allies refusing to commit their own militaries and plenty more firepower in Moscow's arsenal – including the terrifying threat of nuclear attack — the future appears more uncertain than ever.
As ceasefires fail and citizens are attacked as they try to escape, Zelenskyy has appealed to Russian soldiers to surrender: "Listen to me carefully," he said in another viral recording. "Why should you die? What for? I know that you want to survive."
Instagram posts can only hope to bolster resilience among his people and galvanise Western support for so long.
Putin is playing a long game.
And while First Lady Olena Zelenska, like her husband, has posted on Instagram in an effort to support her fellow citizens — "My children are looking at me, I will be next to them and next to my husband and with you" — off-camera, the profound seriousness of the situation they are in is inescapable.
"I'm an alive person, like any human being," the President said at his sand-bagged press conference a few days ago.
"And if a person is not afraid of losing his life, or the lives of his children, there is something unwell about that person.”
But as president of a besieged Ukraine, he says, "I simply do not have the right [to be afraid]".
Whether Zelenskyy's story, and the story of Ukraine, becomes a tale of triumph or of tragedy is yet to be revealed.
But one thing is certain: Zelenskyy has left his comedy days far behind him and as a wartime leader with international stature, no one is laughing at him now.
