Culture

A Russian opposition figure tries — and fails — to mythologize Zelensky

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, President Volodymyr Zelensky has come to occupy a singular place in the global imagination: not merely as Ukraine’s president, but as the voice through which the country’s courage and endurance are made legible to the world. While an ongoing political scandal in Ukraine has involved some in Zelensky’s own inner circle, for many at home and abroad, it is in his public presence that the war’s meaning, its stakes, and its moral contours are most cle