And the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky the ”person of the year” according to the Financial Times. ”He embodies the resilience and courage of his people against Russian aggression” and has become ”a standard bearer of liberal democracy in the biggest global confrontation against authoritarianism of the 21st century”, writes the Financial Times, saying that he has won ”a place in history for his extraordinary display of leadership and fortitude”.
The newspaper compares him to Winston Churchill. Just as the great statesman used the radio to rally his country about him, it reads, Zelensky used social media to wage a relentless campaign aimed at gaining military and financial support from the West. The result is that he has transformed the plight of his people attacked by the Russian military into ”moral leverage on leaders in Europe and the United States. He convinced Europeans to bear the enormous costs of opposing Putin and offering Kiev a path to EU membership”.
The Financial Times also underlines how Zelensky defines himself as “an ordinary man”, who can’t wait to go fishing with his son on the Dnipro river. He is ”a leader who portrays himself as an everyman with humble tastes” to all Ukrainians ”and a deep sense of humanity, qualities that have earned him the admiration of Ukrainians and their supporters abroad’ ‘. And he affirms that he is “the antithesis of Russian president Vladimir Putin, hidden in the Kremlin, whose obsession with rebuilding an empire has cost tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of lives”.
