Opinion: Zelenskyy is the leader of the free world now
He spoke to Americans as no U.S. president in memory has spoken to us, reminding us of our aspirations and pleading for us to live up to them.
He hearkened to the greatest challenges to our own country's survival — the fight for independence, the bombardment of Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 attacks — and insisted that Russia's invasion of Ukraine poses no less urgent a threat to America's values and its standing in the world.
He equated his nation's aspirations for freedom with those of the American civil rights movement, telling his congressional audience that Ukrainians, too, have a dream, and challenging those who claim to support it to put up or shut up.
"This is a terror that Europe has not seen for 80 years," Volodomyr Zelenskyy said, "and we are asking for an answer to this terror from the whole world."
Zelenskyy is a Russian-speaking Ukrainian. But this was the language of Americans, and of a particular American, the greatest orator this country produced in the last century: Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy ... Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
And like Martin Luther King Jr. before him, Volodomyr Zelenskyy, insisted that it was time for America to rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, a mission he suggested could best be accomplished by arming his own embattled constituents and protecting Ukraine's airspace from the Russian invaders.
Bringing the horror to Washington
Ukraine's president appeared before the U.S. Congress in the way the world has come to know him: unshaven and in a T-shirt, with fire in his eyes and bags of exhaustion beneath them. But what authority he projected across the video screen erected in a Capitol auditorium, and how puny the members of his tailored and coifed audience looked as he challenged them to match the courage of his own people.
Even in translation, it was a rhetorical triumph. But this is 2022, not 1963, so instead of a gospel choir Zelenskyy was accompanied by a tightly edited video displaying Ukraine's suffering in all its raw horror. He said nothing as lawmakers squirmed before the still-fresh images of apartments burning and children wailing over their mothers' bloodied corpses, then resumed his speech with an appeal for a new, more muscular global alliance that would guarantee swift retribution against aggressors like Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskyy was careful not to be disrespectful of his audience, repeatedly thanking President Joe Biden, U.S. lawmakers and the American public for its moral, economic and strategic support. But he dismissed any suggestion that the United States has done what is necessary to rescue his country from tyranny, or to honor its own pretensions to global leadership.
"Strong doesn't mean big," he said. "Strong means brave, and ready to fight."
A moral giant with a big ask
Zelenskyy's manifest personal courage and conviction should not diminish the magnitude of his ask, nor the risk the U.S. would take on if it seeks to satisfy his requests. A no-fly zone is not a magic umbrella; it's a pledge to shoot down Russian pilots who violate whatever perimeter the U.S. establishes. However strong our impulse to shelter Ukraine's terrorized citizens, Americans have an even graver responsibility not to incite a nuclear escalation that could take an unprecedented toll of innocent lives.
At the same time, it is hard to imagine any American who watched Wednesday's speech complaining that the rising price of gas is a catastrophe more urgent than any faraway war. To quail before such sacrifices even as Ukrainians flee their homes is to forget the American history Zelenskyy so poignantly evoked.
One thing is clear: However halting his English or casual his dress, Zelenskyy is the leader of the free world today. What remains to be seen is how far smaller politicians presiding over much larger nations will follow him.
Brian Dickerson is the Editorial Page Editor of the Free Press. Contact him at bdickerson@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: Ukraine president Zylenskyy challenges US to be brave
