The Ukrainian president hasn't changed that much, according to his friends. Yet his face has hardened, his words are sharper, his decisions more peremptory. After two years of conflict, Volodymyr Zelensky is at a challenging moment. Having just celebrated his 46th birthday, the fate of the youngest president in Ukrainian history is entirely linked to that of Ukraine at war.
Zelensky's first two metamorphoses are well known. The first, when elected in 2019, transformed a comedian, actor, director and TV producer into a president. The second, when Moscow ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was that from a "peacetime" president – at least a desired and hypothetical peace, an armed conflict having ravaged Donbas for eight years – into a "war" president.
Aware that he was personally targeted by the Russian army, he took the decision not to leave Kyiv and to resist. He became a national hero. Then, in the space of two years, the diplomatic and communicative leader has gradually turned into a veritable warlord.
When the Russian army attacked the Ukrainian capital, with Vladimir Putin's stated aim of conquering the country, taking control of power and the armed forces (what the head of the Kremlin called "denazification" and "demilitarization"), Zelensky could not state strongly enough that he was not meddling in military affairs, nor could he overstate his confidence in his generals to defend the country. Russia was held in check. Two years later, the Ukrainian president is the one making decisions on general staff appointments and supervising battle plans.
Perhaps his riskiest decision has been to order, on February 8, the replacement of General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the most popular man in the country as commander of the armed forces, by General Oleksandr Syrskyi. The latter is a military man crowned with victories but little known to the population and controversial within the army for his determination to defend Bakhmut, eventually lost in May 2023, at all costs. Militarily, the general staff reshuffle doesn't seem to change anything as both officers share the same vision. Politically, on the other hand, by parting company with the military icon of the resistance, Zelensky is putting himself in the firing line. From now on, he will have to answer to Ukrainians for his military strategy.
Another illustration of his transformation is the increasing frequency of presidential trips to the front lines. Zelensky has always shown undeniable physical courage, first in the streets of the bombed-out capital during the Battle of Kyiv, then at the front and in liberated cities such as Izium and Kherson in 2022. But, as the conflict has become entrenched, with the Russian army managing to conquer only Bakhmut and Avdiivka in a year and a half, and Kyiv failing in its summer counteroffensive of 2023, these moves are giving his security services cold sweats. He wants to show his solidarity with soldiers in these difficult times and preserve the unity between the nation and the army.
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