When Igor Novikov, an affable 40-year-old former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was told by a trusted source on February 23, 2022, that Russia would invade the country within 24 hours, he made a most unusual choice: he decided to book a haircut so he could look like Jimmy Fallon, the American chat show host.
As he sat in his elegant villa in a quiet, affluent village on the outskirts of Kyiv, soaking in the terrifying news, he recalled the time a year earlier when Fallon had shown a segment of an interview Igor had done with the US news channel MSNBC and pointed out their striking resemblance to the audience.
