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Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin Showed Us Who They Really Are This Week
And it isn’t what most expected
This is not a commentary on the tragic lunacy unfolding in Eastern Europe right now; you can find plenty of that everywhere from CNN to Twitter to, God help us, TikTok. Rather, it’s a brief observation about the two men at the heart of the struggle for Ukraine’s survival as an independent nation: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Going into the conflict, we thought we knew who they were.
We were wrong.
For two decades, Russia has been led by a former KGB officer who likes to show the world he’s hard by riding horses shirtless, poisoning his political enemies, and trying to rebuild the old Russian Empire with himself as its Tsar. For roughly two years, Ukraine has been led by a former comic actor who was unknown to most of the world and seemed to be something of a lightweight. Three days of war completely changed everything.
Vladimir Putin has been a raving, incoherent, train-wreck in recent days, proving to the world his ego supersedes everything, including the lives of both Ukrainians and Russians. Every time he speaks, his carefully crafted image cracks a little bit more, and he looks weaker and weaker. Volodymyr Zelensky, by contrast, has…
