Author Simon Shuster, who wrote the best-selling biography on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “The Showman,” speaks with Inside Edition Digital about the future of the war and Ukraine's unlikely leader.
Two years into a war he never wanted, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is focusing on ensuring that his country can continue to defend itself against Russia's attacks, no matter the support it receives from outside forces, his biographer tells Inside Edition Digital.
Simon Shuster, author of the best-selling Zelenskyy biography, "The Showman," says the leader of Ukraine is focusing on his country's own abilities to produce weaponry while remaining clear-eyed about the attention span its allies have when it comes to supporting a prolonged defense against invasion.
“They are ramping up as fast as they can," Shuster says. "I think the war is moving in the direction of what Zelenskyy calls active defense. The weapons that Ukraine has been producing have been quite impressive. These are attack drones that can fly hundreds up to 1,000 kilometers. These are missiles, including ballistic missiles. During the Soviet Union, Ukraine had the Red Army's biggest intercontinental ballistic missile factory in the city of Dnipro then called Dnipropetrovsk…Those factories have been poorly managed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There've been a lot of problems, historically speaking, with corruption, mismanagement in the defense sector. But once the full-scale invasion was underway, there's been a massive effort to revive some of those technologies.”
If anyone is equipped to share insight on Zelenskyy's thoughts, hopes and plans for the future, it's Shuster. The author takes readers inside Zelenskyy's life ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and follows the unlikely wartime leader through the war.
“His transformation and evolution as a leader, as a person, has been really dramatic and fascinating to watch and to follow,” Shuster says. “In the early days when I met him, when he was running for president, he was fairly naive about what the challenges of the presidency would be like, and he did run a campaign that was in some ways similar to what Donald Trump had done in the United States -- not in terms of policies or positions, but in terms of running as an outsider, promising to drain the swamp, promising to breathe new blood, bring fresh faces into the political leadership.”
Shuster watched as Zelenskyy gained firsthand experience as a world leader. He "quickly became disillusioned with alliances, and he saw that allies of Ukraine really are driven by their interests, their political interests, their national interests, and rarely are they driven by shared values or common goals," Shuster said of Zelenksyy. "I think that frustrated him early on and was a difficult lesson in the ugliness of international affairs."
But even uglier is war and all that it entails. It transforms all who experience it, and Zelenskyy was no different.
“Those early weeks and months when he really stepped into the persona that we now see every day on our newsfeeds and television screens, the kind of wartime leader from central casting, you could think of it that way,” he says. “That transformation was really stark, and honestly, I didn't think he had it in him. I was surprised when he was able to play that role so effectively and so convincingly and to really inspire the world to believe in Ukraine, Ukraine's victory, and to provide all the support that Ukraine has gotten.”
Shuster began roaming the Ukrainian presidential halls in April 2022, and though it was at times an uphill battle to convince those close to Zelenskyy of his intentions, the president understood the importance of preserving his record.
“When I was going on the presidential train, the security guards, the bodyguards were a little bit suspicious and they were careful to tell me what I could and could not describe or show, not to take photos. But generally, the president and members of his team were not put off by my presence,” he says.
Shuster spoke to Zelenskyy and those close to him, including his family, from whom he was separated during much of the early stages of the war. Schuster first met First Lady Olena Zelenska in June 2022. "One thing that really comes through in her experience is just how awful and heartbreaking this has been for all Ukrainians, even Ukrainians who are not physically, personally impacted in the way that soldiers or soldiers' families are," he says. “When the first lady was in hiding, she described living basically news item to news item. She and the children never left Ukraine, but they were in a series of safe houses at some distance from Kyiv, from the president, because it was just too dangerous for them to live together. But she was eager to get back."
Feb. 24 marks two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia President Vladimir Putin at first expected to take control of Ukraine within 10 days, according to research by the UK-based defense and security think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Putin, like many, underestimated the Ukrainian resolve for self-determination. “If there's one thing you learn in covering Russia and Ukraine for this many years it's don't make predictions because they usually turn out to be wrong, mine certainly have,” Shuster tells Inside Edition Digital.
But Ukraine's refusal to give up does not mean the country wants the war to go on forever.
“At the end of 2022, President Zelenskyy did present a 10-point peace plan, and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has been working on bringing that peace process to life, essentially developing the architecture for a possible future negotiation to end the war…It also is underreported, I think,” Shuster says. “Many people have the sense that the Ukrainians have sort of rejected the idea of peace negotiations, that they don't want to participate in a peace process. That's not the case. They're very much engaged in that, not directly with the Russians. But they're sort of setting the terms and creating the foundations for a peace process that I think we will see play out in some way in the coming months.”
Zelenskyy is also aware that his country could face less sympathetic leaders pf allied nations in the coming years, Shuster says. He is preparing for the "Western aid declines, and... the very real possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House,” Shuster says
“The Ukrainians are preparing for such eventualities by increasing their own production of weapons so that they are not forced into some kind of negotiation or capitulation that they refuse to take part in,” Shuster says. “Zelenskyy knows that he will have to work with any president that the American voters elect. So he's been very careful not to criticize Trump and not to alienate any side of the American political spectrum, insofar as he can avoid it. He tries to be respectful of all parties because he knows that bipartisan support for Ukraine is just really crucial to its survival.”
Though 2024 would typically be an election year for Zelenskyy as well, Ukraine is still under Marshall Law. Because of this, Ukraine's own bylaws do not permit elections to be held. And lifting Marshall Law under current circumstances would be "impractical" for Zelenskyy," Shuster says.
“I've talked to length with President Zelenskyy about this, how he thinks about it, and he just feels it's practically impossible when you have millions of people living abroad as refugees, when you have about a fifth of the country under occupation, also with millions of Ukrainian voters living there who wouldn't be able to participate in an election,” he says. “Also, the security concerns, elections generally force people to gather in groups, gather in large groups at voting places, at political rallies and so forth, and those would be targets for Russian drone attacks and missile attacks.
"I don't think he's delaying elections out of a desire to cling to power by any means," Shuster continues.
"I think if he had those political calculations at the front of his mind, it would be smarter for him to hold a ballot, even if a very problematic one, but to secure that victory, secure another five years in office," he says. "Honestly, I don't think there are any politicians now in Ukraine who could challenge him, but that's not where his head's at."
Instead, Zelenskyy is focused on the war at hand, a reflection of the resiliency of the underdog that many underestimated. It's a lesson Shuster says he believes will be taken from this time in history.
“That’s an important one,” he adds. "Just don't bet all your chips on the mathematically most-likely scenario. Human resilience, human ingenuity, these things can surprise us in various ways, in ways that no one predicts. I think this whole war has taught me certainly to be very humble about assumptions about the relative strength of various geopolitical players or figures or leaders or people. So that's an important lesson.”
Related Stories
