3 years ago Volodymyr Zelenskiy was a candidate for President of Ukraine

[speak easy]

https://www.bellanaija.com/2019/04/volodymyr-zelensky-the-comedian-who-stars-as-ukrainian-president-on-tv-wins-presidential-election/

an eternity ago



TIME profile

It made me wonder whether he regretted the choice he made three years ago, around the time we first met. His comedy show had been a hit. Standing in his dressing room, he was still glowing from the admiration of the crowd. Friends waited backstage to start the after-party. Fans gathered outside to take a picture with him. This was just three months into his run for the presidency, when it was not too late for Zelensky to turn back.

But he does not regret the choice he made, not even with the hindsight of the war. “Not for a second,” he told me in the presidential compound. He doesn’t know how the war will end, or how history will describe his place in it. In this moment, he only knows Ukraine needs a wartime President. And that is the role he intends to play.
https://time.com/6171277/volodymyr-zelensky-interview-ukraine-war/

[secondwind]

1. He hastened to the call. This was his destiny......

and his legacy. God bless this amazing man.

[Irish_Dem]

2. Crisis doesn't change character, it reveals it.

He is a man of great courage, integrity, wisdom.

[speak easy]

4. and great political skills

Compared to 'courage, integrity, wisdom', politics seems dirty. but like sex, it is life itself.

[Irish_Dem]

5. Yes he has superb political skills. He is a world class leader.

Up there with Churchill and FDR.

[speak easy]

6. ... that flash of recognition ...

a great leader among us.

[Irish_Dem]

7. We don't often recognize profound events or people in real time.

Often it takes some historical perspective to understand events.

But this is not the case with Ukraine and Zelensky. We know it now.

[3Hotdogs]

3. His, will be a story for the ages.

[liberalla]

8. Bookmarking! I don't want to miss this Time article!

[Paper Roses]

9. One of the highlights of my long life would be to meet this man.

His courage should inspire all of us.

[Historic NY]

10. The man in the arena.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who “but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.” TR.

[niyad]

11. KNR and bookmarking. He is carrying the weight and hope of the world on

his shoulders.

[True Dough]

12. Remember,

He was offered a safe exit just as the war began. He refused. Many would have accepted.

Zelensky is a picture of courage.

[speak easy]

14. IC believed he would be assassinated.

[True Dough]

15. I thought death in the short-term was unavoidable

but he has somehow overcome the odds, and I'm grateful for that.

[greatauntoftriplets]

13. And to think that drumpf thought he could bamboozle him into spilling dirt on Joe Biden.