If this is the first war in the TikTok era, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is its first star. Refusing to leave the capital, Kyiv, the vocal Zelensky has been on the streets filming selfie videos to inspire his country. They certainly have done that — and made him something of a global social media hit at the same time.
Despite having been urged to leave the capital for safety, he has remained steadfast. According to The Washington Post, when the US apparently offered him a flight out, he replied: "The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride."
The world awoke on Saturday to another video of Zelensky, this time in front of Ukraine’s House of Chimaeras, a beautiful art nouveau building in downtown Kyiv.
Unshaven, clearly tired from days of the fighting, the Ukranian president has become the face of this conflict, as the plucky country stands up to its larger neighbour.
"Good morning everybody! Ukrainians: there’s a lot of fake information online that I call on our army to lay down arms and that there’s an evacuation," he told a watching world.
"I’m here. We won’t lay down our arms. We will defend our state, our territory, our Ukraine, our children. That’s all I have to say. Glory to Ukraine!"
The former TV actor and stand-up comedian seemed an unlikely presidential candidate in 2019, but he won the election by a landslide.
On Friday, after three years of failing to negotiate with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, he said: "The enemy has designated me as target No 1 and my family as target No 2."
We won’t lay down our arms. We will defend our state, our territory, our Ukraine, our children
Videos of Ukrainians defying the invasion have gone viral. In one, an elderly Kyiv resident yells at Russian troops: "You have your own country and we have ours. Don’t you have any problems in your own country? Are you all rich there? Shame on you!"
Another shows a person telling Russian troops in a broken-down personnel carrier: "Can I tow you back to Russia?"
These are ordinary people, ordinary heroes, fighting for their country.
In contrast, Putin’s outlandish and incoherent justification — that Ukraine is run by "a gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis" — is straight out of the playbook of another demagogue, former US president Donald Trump.
What Trump has shown Putin — and every other dangerous and unstable world leader — is that once you lie, you just need to keep on lying.
As Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama said when he gave the Nelson Mandela lecture in SA in 2018: "We see the utter loss of shame in political leaders when they’re caught in a lie and they just double down and lie some more."
A show of courage
Zelensky is Jewish, Putin a known anti-Semite. Who’s fooling who?
"I have a lot of complaints against Zelensky over his domestic politics," Ukrainian journalist Kristina Berdynskykh tweeted late on Friday. "But the way he behaves during the offensive of absolute evil against Ukraine is real political leadership and tremendous courage."
Arguably the bravest soldiers are the 13 border guards on Snake Island, 300km from the southern Crimea region that Russia annexed a few years ago.
When confronted by a Russian naval ship and told to surrender, the soldiers replied: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."
It seems that’s what the whole of Ukraine is saying to Russia.
Shapshak is editor-in-chief of Stuff Studios (stuff.co.za) and publisher of Scrolla.Africa
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