Ukraine's president tries to avert panic as pressure mounts

Russian attack helicopters were spotted buzzing within miles of his country’s borders Sunday. The last strands of diplomacy were unravelling. Allies evacuated their embassies, airlines cancelled flights, and a large number of private jets departed from the capital.

For Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president and a former comedic actor who was elected three years ago on a message of optimism about Ukraine’s relations with Russia — something that now seems a distant memory — room for manoeuvre narrowed over the weekend to a tiny selection of uncertain options.

During a phone call Sunday with President Joe Biden, Zelenskyy issued an invitation for a visit, so the American president could “contribute to de-escalation” with his presence in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. The United States has already ordered most American diplomats to leave, making a presidential visit unlikely.

“I am convinced that your arrival in Kyiv in the coming days, which are crucial for stabilising the situation, will be a powerful signal,” Zelenskyy said, according to a Ukrainian readout of the conversation, adding that the Ukrainian capital is “safe and under reliable protection.”

Also read: No 'cause for optimism' after Biden-Putin talks on Ukraine

Zelenskyy also thanked Biden for American support, including airlifts of armaments, and said that, “We hope that, among other things, it will help prevent the spread of panic.”

What is perhaps Europe’s most intense security crisis since the end of the Cold War appears to be nearing a climax, with Washington warning that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could begin at any moment. But the 44-year-old Ukrainian president is clinging to the strategy he has pursued for months, using every appearance to caution against panic and overreaction, to the point of seeming nearly delusional about the grave risks his country faces.

From early in his presidency, Zelenskyy was seen as a novice playing a high-stakes game with a shrewd and experienced opponent, President Vladimir Putin of Russia. And gaps have opened with allies in recent weeks as Biden and leaders of Europe’s great powers have raised a global alarm, treating the threat of an invasion much more seriously than Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy has remained engaged in diplomacy even as no clear path to a settlement is in focus, while instructing his military to signal, as it said in a statement over the weekend, that Ukraine is “absolutely ready to fight.”

Adhering to a disciplined public relations strategy has been a hallmark of Zelenskyy’s tenure, seen as springing from the background he and important aides share in the entertainment industry.

Supporters say he has little choice but to project calm whatever the circumstances, lest Ukrainians make runs on banks or grocery stores.

Ukraine is now nearly surrounded by Russian and Russian-backed forces on a high level of readiness, with the start of Russian naval exercises on the Black Sea on Sunday completing the noose in the south. Russian officials have said they do not intend to invade Ukraine.

Also read: Germany to Putin: 'Untie the noose' around Ukraine

Adding to the sense of alarm, some of Zelenskyy’s main allies reduced staffing or evacuated embassies in Kyiv over the weekend. The United States announced a drawdown at the US Embassy except for a “core team” of senior diplomats, citing the risk of combat. Canada announced a pullback of diplomats to the western city of Lviv.

But Zelenskyy has criticised the evacuation of diplomats as needlessly alarmist and remained defiant, playing down the threat to his country — despite some of the most ominous military moves in Europe in decades.

“The best friend for enemies is panic in our country,” he told reporters in southern Ukraine on Saturday, where he observed a police training exercise. Even that choice of venue was significant: the police drilled in anti-riot skills to prevent internal unrest, not a foreign invasion. Zelenskyy skipped public appearances at military exercises also underway in Ukraine over the weekend.

Also over the weekend, Dutch airline KLM halted flights to Ukraine and air travel more broadly seemed to be at risk as airline insurers reacted to the US warnings of an imminent war.

Zelenskyy’s Ministry of Infrastructure scrambled Sunday to assure airlines, saying the government had not closed the airspace and suggesting it might step in to safeguard airplanes.

The flight cancellations helped drive home to Ukrainians the seriousness of the military risk. But the infrastructure ministry made no mention of war. It blamed the flight disruptions vaguely on “fluctuations in insurance markets.”

Also over the weekend, the US military said it had withdrawn about 150 National Guard soldiers who were assisting the Ukrainian military as trainers. No matter, Zelenskyy seemed to signal: “As a state, we must count on ourselves, on our military, on our citizens.”

A Ukrainian news outlet, Ukrainska Pravda, that has monitored airplane travel through flight tracking sites reported that Sunday the largest number of private and chartered jets departed Kyiv in a single day since the group began watching flights six years ago, indicating the country’s elite was getting out.

In another ominous sign Sunday, American members of a cease-fire observer mission by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to the eastern Ukraine conflict packed up and left their hotel, Reuters reported, and British observers pulled out of territory held by Russian-backed separatists to Ukrainian-held areas, local media reported.

The departure of the observers from the front line, just as the risk of war looms, leaves Ukraine with fewer chances that international monitors will be able to report separatist troop movements that might telegraph the start of military action.

Also read: Ukraine advises airlines to skirt Black Sea due to Russian drills

Over the weekend, a key adviser to Zelenskyy said he saw greater chances for a diplomatic solution than for war, although the diplomacy around the Russian troop buildup has grown threadbare.

On Monday and Tuesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit Kyiv and Moscow. A German official, speaking on background in Berlin, said he did not expect a breakthrough and it was unclear whether a specific settlement proposal was on the table.

Scholz, in his meeting with Putin, would seek to gain a better understanding of Russia’s goals and ascertain if there were options for de-escalation, the official said.

Zelenskyy’s optimism, while clearly intended to head off panic, has deeper roots.

Even as a teenager, growing up in Russian-speaking Jewish family in an industrial city in central Ukraine, Zelenskyy took part in stand-up comedy competitions. He eventually founded his own studio, Kvartal 95, whose shows and movies became hits throughout the former Soviet Union.

In one show, “Servant of the People,” Zelenskyy played an idealistic schoolteacher whose tirade against corruption goes viral. The message was so popular that Zelenskyy started a political party named for the show, and won the real presidency and a majority in Parliament in elections in 2019.

Like the fictional leader he portrayed, Zelenskyy campaigned on a sunny vision of turning a new page for Ukraine and negotiating a peace settlement with Russia.

Zelenskyy had hoped for diplomatic backup from the United States in negotiations to end the war with Russian-led separatist in eastern Ukraine, which has been ongoing for eight years, and is distinct from the new threat of a direct Russian attack.

But that strategy unravelled in the events that led to the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump, in a first setback for the Ukrainian leader.

As Zelenskyy sought US diplomatic support, the US envoy, Kurt Volker, instead worked alongside Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, not to negotiate matters of war and peace but rather to request that Zelenskyy investigate Trump’s political opponent, Joe Biden. The requests led ultimately to Trump’s infamous phone call asking Zelenskyy to “do us a favour” and hinting about withholding military aid for Ukraine if he did not.

One result has been distrust by Zelenskyy and his top officials of any dealings beyond those directly with the White House, and some disdain for the US foreign policy establishment, as seen in his criticism of American moves to remove diplomats from Ukraine today.

Early in his tenure, Zelenskyy had floated ideas of resolving the conflict with Russia by wielding Ukraine’s soft power as the largest democracy in the former Soviet Union.

And he had hoped through his personal example to defuse Moscow’s accusations that the Ukrainian government was seized by “neo-fascists” after a 2014 revolution. The Ukrainian government has taken pains to point out it is the only state in the world outside of Israel with both a Jewish president and Jewish prime minister.

But not long after his election, he had also hinted at a stubborn streak. In Ukraine’s dealings with Russia, he had suggested, the country wouldn’t bend. He noted Ukraine’s position as the largest democracy in the Soviet Union, and promoted the establishment of a Ukraine-based, Russian language television station to broadcast into breakaway areas in the east that could also be accessible online in Russia.

“Ukraine will not give up on its mission to serve as an example of democracy for post-Soviet countries,” he said in his first speech on Russian policy after his election in 2019. Ukraine would resist, and accept help wherever it could, from “everyone who is ready to fight side by side with us for our freedom and for yours.”