Volodymyr Zelenskyy at War: The President in T

The video messages of an unshaven president in a T-shirt are already iconic. But Volodymyr Zelenskyy not only shames his opponent Putin, but also us.

"This is just like television, only you can see much further," says Peter Sellers with a wonderfully colorful sentence in Hal Ashby's political satire Welcome, Mr. Chance (1979).

The film tells how a gardener experiences his surroundings for the first time after a long life spent exclusively in the garden of a Washington mansion.

Washington's cynical political biotope is also otherwise astonishing. But it is precisely his complete unworldliness that allows Chancey Gardner to walk through the undergrowth of a power-obsessed environment unscathed and ultimately rise to US President.

A post he accepts with the same mild smile as a cup of tea.

Paul Ingenday

Europe correspondent for the feuilleton in Berlin.

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Until a few months ago, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's story could have been seen as a spin-off of an ingenious American screenplay idea.

No, Ronald Reagan is not a fair comparison for the current President of Ukraine;

Reagan was governor of California for eight years before reaching for the highest office in the state. He was allowed to study in peace, although he soon profited from the accusation of acting.

Asked by a journalist in 1966 how he would fare as California state leader, the lead actor in the chimpanzee film Bedtime for Bonzo quipped, "I don't know, I've never played a governor."

What could be more concrete than your own death?

Volodymyr Zelenskyj, born in 1978, who to this day speaks better Russian than Ukrainian, actually resembled Chancey Gardner in Ashby's film.

Because before he turned into a politician, he knew little more than the television world that had made him a star.

Like a man who anticipates what he will be accused of, he donned the apparent blemish like armor.

And the maneuver worked.

In all seriousness, Zelenskyy named his political party after the title of the TV series "Servant of the People", in which a history teacher is elected President of Ukraine (FAZ of March 2), won a sweeping election victory in 2019 in the most wonderful reflection of fiction and reality, which reveals more about his country than about him, and henceforth blurred his real presidency with his screen role:

Material for postmodern media-sociological master’s theses.

Director Alexey Kiryuschenko, who is a friend of Zelenskyy, said: “Politics in Ukraine are crazier than any screenplay.

No satirist could imagine what is happening here.”

In fact, two years ago it was impossible for anyone to escape the reflection trap, least of all the journalists who were watching him closely.

It was said that Selenskyj shyed away from confrontation, that he was hiding behind his social media strategy and did not organize any rallies, only shows.

A Western diplomat was quoted as saying that Zelenskyy had "no concrete ideas".

If that saying was ever true, it's over now.

What could be more concrete than your own death and the physical demise of your homeland?

As long as Zelenskyy remains alive, nothing in his daily existence is "just like on TV," as Chancey Gardner puts it, and the newfound perspective width is equivalent to a man's freedom an inch from the abyss.

He who used to be ridiculed

because he hardly did anything like a "real politician", he whom his enemies dismissed as an amateur, a comedian and a puppet of the powerful, uses the tools of the trade of screen fiction only to take on the brutal reality itself.

When France and the US offered to save his skin, he replied, "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition." It doesn't matter that, as a professional, Zelenskyy knows exactly how to face the camera;