Kyiv
—
As Russian tanks rolled over the border in February 2022, rumors that Volodymyr Zelensky had fled Ukraine were rife. With Kyiv under heavy bombardment and Russia closing in, European leaders feared the worst. Then the Ukrainian leader posted a grainy video of himself standing in the dark in front of the presidency building, flanked by his top advisors, and announced simply: “We are here.”
Zelensky’s removal was a key part of Russia’s plan to take over Ukraine – a project Moscow expected to complete in days. He was to be taken or killed, unless he ran away first. A source close to the president told CNN that Russian agents had rented apartments in the immediate vicinity of the presidential office, with an order to eliminate him.
At one point early in the war, a joke went around that Zelensky became a comedian – the career he pursued before entering politics – because he was not afraid of bombing. In those early days, Zelensky’s uncanny capacity for survival and humor encapsulated the defiant mood of the country. The story as told by the Ukrainians, is that when the US offered to evacuate him, Zelensky shot back: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
As Ukraine prepares to mark the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Tuesday, and with no end to the war in sight, Zelensky’s message hasn’t changed. He’s still there, having survived not only around a dozen Russian assassination attempts but also a corruption scandal that last year brought down his closest adviser, who stood beside him in that now-famous video, and two of his top government ministers.
For this assessment of Zelensky’s position, CNN spoke to some of those closest to the president – including his wife and his speechwriter – as well as diplomats and politicians from Europe and the US who have worked closely with him and his administration.
Many attribute his sticking power to his skills as a political operator, which, alongside his inspirational speeches, have earned him comparisons with Winston Churchill.
But like the British wartime leader who also led his country’s fight against a bigger, more powerful enemy, Zelensky has made missteps along the way and his future looks increasingly uncertain as the war grinds on. Even among the 60% of Ukrainians who say they trust Zelensky, only about half believe he should run for a second term.
Last July, Ukrainians took to the streets in rare wartime protests to push back against the government’s plans to weaken the independence of the country’s anti-corruption watchdogs. Zelensky was forced to make a U-turn and acknowledge public anger.
He repeatedly clashed with his former military chief, the hugely popular General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, finally sacking him in 2024 in what some saw as an attempt to neutralize his main political rival. More recently, he’s had to navigate a rocky relationship with a US president who has berated and humiliated him in front of the world.
Throughout, Zelensky has shown a feistiness that Bartosz Cichocki, Poland’s ambassador to Kyiv during the Russian invasion, believes likely comes from his childhood in one of the poorest parts of what was then the Soviet Union.
“During his childhood, in Soviet Ukraine, you had to prove your strength, particularly if you were little Jewish boy trying to prove to everyone around that you deserve respect, it explains a lot,” Cichocki said.
“He does not respect weakness, he can confront superior power, you need that when you have to confront bastards like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and (his aide Nikolai) Patrushev and all that gang.”
But with the war showing no sign of ending, how long those qualities can keep him in power is an open question.
At 48, and almost seven years into his tenure, Zelensky is the youngest person to have led an independent Ukraine. He is also the country’s most unlikely leader. A lawyer by training, he had no political experience before running for president, having spent the first half of his professional career in showbusiness. He made his name in the hit TV show “Servant of the People” in which he starred as an impoverished schoolteacher who unexpectedly becomes president.
When he first announced his candidacy, many thought it was a joke. But they stopped laughing when Zelensky defeated incumbent Petro Poroshenko, winning more than 73% of the vote.
Before entering politics, he had built a business empire with revenues in the tens of millions of dollars, something Henry Hale, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and the co-author of “The Zelensky Effect”, says was perfect preparation for the top job.
“I don’t think he came into the job naïve. He understood that if you want to make it in showbusiness in Ukraine, if you want to be on TV, you have no choice but to work with oligarchs, because they control all the TV channels,” Hale told CNN.
He’s also a natural in front of the camera. While he does sit down for interviews and hold news conferences, his preferred way of speaking to people is through direct video messages, an idea he came up with himself, according to his speech writer and communication adviser, Dmytro Lytvyn.
“He decided on the first day that he must explain to people what’s going on,” he said. “We do fewer of them now, but the president thinks it’s important, as the war is moving on, just to explain what is happening, to show people that he is here and doing something,” Lytvyn told CNN in Kyiv.
The videos are highly informal, sometimes recorded on his phone, selfie-style. But they resonate. Soldiers on the frontlines have told CNN of their excitement when their unit gets mentioned. He speaks in Ukrainian – something that did not come to him naturally. Like many from eastern parts of the country, Zelensky grew up speaking Russian. He only perfected his command of the Ukrainian language as an adult, after hiring a tutor.
Zelensky’s finest hours as a leader came when his country was going through some of its darkest moments. When he decided to stay in Kyiv as the Russians were closing in, it was a sign for many that he was a leader they could trust.
Andrii Sybiha, who served as Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff during the invasion and is now Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, was in the room when Zelensky made that decision.
“He had a choice. His life and the life of his family, or accepting an ultimatum, this so-called capitulation agreement. He refused and his family stayed Ukraine. I really appreciate his strength and spirit,” Sybiha told CNN.
The fact that Zelensky’s wife Olena, along with their children Oleksandra and Kyrylo, also stay put, only underscored that feeling.
Olena Zelenska told CNN she felt “acute fear” during those first days. Later, this changed to constant fear which she tries to push away. “Because otherwise it prevents you from living normally. This fear sometimes tries to surface … but I don’t allow myself to dwell on it for long.”
Almost overnight, Zelensky’s approval ratings shot up from 37% to 90%.
This was a moment when Zelensky’s knack for communication paid off. He may not have known how to be a wartime leader, but he knew how to communicate like one.
Against the odds, Ukraine managed to repel the initial Russian attack on Kyiv and, within a few months, took back large swaths of land originally seized by Moscow.
But Ukraine’s successes came to a halt after the liberation of Kherson in November 2022. After a widely expected counter-offensive in the summer of 2023 failed to materialize, Zelensky began clashing more openly with Zaluzhnyi, whom he removed from the post in early 2024.
More frontline stalemate followed – until Kyiv, under the new leadership of General Oleksandr Syrskyi, launched a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024. The move delivered a major boost to Ukraine’s morale and slowed down Russian advances along the eastern front.
But that boost also didn’t last long – 2025 was marked mostly by Russia’s slow, grinding offensive along the 1,200-kilometer-long frontline. The stalemate continues and, as the war enters its fourth year, Ukraine continues to struggle along the frontlines. Peace negotiations appear stuck, with Russia sticking to maximalist demands on which Zelensky is not willing to compromise.
Zelensky knew from the beginning that Ukraine would not be able to sustain the fight without significant help from its allies, most importantly the United States. His determination to secure the assistance he believes Ukraine deserves has, at times, come across as very forceful.
But it often worked. Germany, which was initially very reluctant to get involved in the conflict, refusing to provide Kyiv with weapons, eventually did so and is now one of the country’s biggest backers.
Lytvyn, the communications advisor, told CNN that Zelensky decided early on to make appeals for help directly to other nations, rather than just their leaders.
“He began to talk directly to the public. So many leaders started to help, not because he asked them, but because he asked their people, and the people then asked them,” he said.
Public pressure became even stronger after the initial wave of Ukrainian liberations of towns around Kyiv revealed Russian atrocities – including mass killings of civilians.
But the authenticity and strong messaging that worked so well in Ukraine and across Europe did not work with US President Donald Trump.
Ukraine, and Zelensky personally, have been a toxic topic for Trump. It was the allegation that Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate his political rival Joe Biden in 2019 that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
After returning to the White House, Trump has adopted a far more hostile position toward Ukraine than his predecessor. He has accused Zelensky of being a dictator and repeatedly suggested Ukraine, not Russia, started the war.
Against this background, European diplomats, as well as some US lawmakers, warned Zelensky that a trip to Washington was unwise. But Zelensky did not listen. “He went to the White House with the idea that (the Ukrainians) are in the right and that they are the victim here and that they will show (Trump) this. He did not gauge the situation well, and it ended up costing him,” one European diplomat told CNN.
“He is stubborn and convinced he knows the best. Of course, without that, he would not be where he is today. But in some negotiations, this just doesn’t work,” the diplomat added.
The disastrous meeting, shown live around the world, ended with Trump and Vice President JD Vance accusing Zelensky of not wanting peace and not being thankful enough.
While many officials watched the meeting with horror, it won Zelensky praise in Ukraine. His approval ratings got a boost and Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s prime minister, told CNN she was proud of Zelensky that day. “He defended the position of the Ukrainian people,” she said.
Not everyone was surprised by Vance’s comments. European allies already had plenty of experience of Zelensky’s brusque manner. “The Ukrainians were always very demanding and very direct, always asking for more, especially in the beginning,” the European diplomat told CNN.
In the early days of the full-scale invasion, in calls to other leaders, Zelensky would skip the customary niceties and go straight to a request for more weapons.
“They were under attack, they were fighting for their lives, and they were looking for weapons,” the diplomat said. “This was well understood in Europe, where we all knew they were fighting for our security as well. If you come to Kyiv, you’d see there’s no time to say thank you … but this is a lot less clear if you are far away, like in the White House.”
Since the disastrous Oval Office meeting, however, Zelensky has figured out a way to communicate with Trump, according to US Senator Richard Blumenthal, a close ally of Zelensky, who spoke to CNN in Kyiv this week.
“I think he actually has been extremely adroit and insightful in dealing with this administration,” Blumenthal said. “He has mastered an understanding of how to be resolute and firm, but at the same time, appreciative for what America is doing. And I think he’s very genuine about it.”
Four years into the war, Zelensky still enjoys poll ratings that many leaders could only dream of. While they have fluctuated since the start of the war, dropping during Ukraine’s unsuccessful counteroffensives and corruption scandals, they have never fallen below 52%, according to polling data from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).
When Zelensky visited Prague last year, every minute of his schedule was meticulously planned. There was no time to spare – until someone let it slip that there was a group of Ukrainian cleaners working in the Czech Parliament. Zelensky decided he simply had to meet them.
The Czechs rolled out the red carpet for Zelensky, but it was a photo of him being embraced by the grinning cleaning ladies that became the defining picture of the whole visit.
“It is very typical. He will always fight with his security to let people approach him. He believes that this is what he needs to do,” said Volodymyr Paniotto, a sociologist and the president of KIIS.
But his man-of-the-people image has suffered some serious blows over the past year, and a corruption scandal has proved particularly damaging to a president elected on a promise to clean up politics. Anti-government protests in July last year were followed by criticism from Ukraine’s western allies, including the European Union, which has made it clear to Kyiv that it must implement strong anti-graft measures if it wants to join, forcing Zelensky to reverse his plans.
Corruption scandals have brought down several people in Zelensky’s inner circle, including his former business partner Timur Mindich and his long-time right-hand man Andriy Yermak, leading some observers to question whether Zelensky had a tendency to over-rely on tainted allies.
For years, Yermak in particular appeared untouchable. But even he could not withstand being implicated in a scandal over alleged kickbacks in the energy sector at a time when Ukrainians were freezing because of constant Russian attacks on energy infrastructure.
While Zelensky has never been directly implicated, Cichocki, the former Polish ambassador, told CNN he was not sure the president could weather the Yermak bombshell. “I thought this was the end for him. And after a month, with a new team in place, he is back, like the Phoenix,” he said.
The years of pressure and heartbreak have taken a visible toll on Zelensky. His pre-war youthful and cleanshaven face is long gone, overtaken by worry lines and increasingly gray stubble.
He drinks a lot of coffee – black, no sugar – to get through the work day, which usually begins between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., when the first battlefield reports start coming in. Zelenska told CNN that looking at her husband, it feels like the war has been going on a lot longer than four years.
She said that there has not been a single moment of complete happiness since the war started. That will have to wait until after the conflict is over. Instead, she focuses on brief moments of joy, such as when the family got a new puppy and brought it home for the first time.
“You can see that looking at him. But that is not as important as what he is going through on the inside, on an emotional level.”
Lytvyn, who spends most days in constant contact with Zelensky, said he has not lost his sense of humor and does – sometimes – find time to relax with a book or a movie, especially on long train journeys.
“What I admire about him is that no matter what he went through, he remains a decent guy,” he said. “He treats people better than they treat him.”
The comedian-turned-president has survived until now, against long odds. But the picture is perhaps bleaker than ever before.
Ukrainians across the country are freezing in the darkness as Russia continues its campaign of strikes on energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s frontline defenses have held up – but only just. Russia slowly continues grinding forward, albeit at astronomical cost.
And while Zelensky has managed to repair his relationship with Trump, he has not swayed him into reinstating US military aid. Instead, Trump continues to press Zelensky into negotiations that look increasingly stacked against Ukraine.
Paniotto said that most Ukrainians oppose holding elections – not only during the war, but even during any kind of temporary ceasefire. “In the eyes of the majority, Zelensky is the leader who should take the country to peace,” Paniotto told CNN.
When and how that will happen is unclear. But Sybiha told CNN he has every faith in Zelensky’s ability to get there: “He knows how to roll with the punches.”
