Few world leaders arrive for an effective state visit to the UK wearing battle fatigues, but even fewer leaders come to the UK with a mission to remind their hosts of their own greatness and history, manifestly leaving a flattered audience so convinced that the world does indeed need their country’s leadership. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has many extraordinary skills as a showman, but one is a unique ability to appeal to a nation’s psyche.
In retrospect, it would have been unforgivable for the Ukrainian leader to have only visited EU leaders at their meeting in Brussels and not also flown to the UK – the major European power that has from the outset provided not just moral support, but been in the vanguard in offering arms, training, intelligence, and has since 2014 cooperated with Ukraine by helping to rebuild its navy. So when it was leaked that Zelenskiy was likely to address EU leaders on Thursday, it should have been self-evident he would also come to London, but the visit, meticulously planned and choreographed, was kept under wraps until Downing Street broke the news before 9am.
The visit is personally important, even a relief, for Rishi Sunak. However much he asserts his support for Ukraine, or visits Kyiv, he cannot as a matter of personality quite evoke the Churchillian uplands of Boris Johnson, or strike up the same relationship as that forged by Johnson and Zelenskiy in the decisive opening days of the war. Except in stature, Sunak is no Tom Cruise.
Reports that Sunak on becoming prime minister adopted an accountant’s interest in the cost of war may have reflected a reasonable desire to protect the public purse, especially given the recent reports of corruption inside the Ukrainian ministry of defence, but some feared it denoted a change in style from his predecessors. Yes, Zelenskiy took the risk of praising Johnson in his speech saying: “You got others united when it seemed absolutely impossible,” but it was clear from Zelenskiy’s tone that his bond was with Britain, not one individual prime minister. For Sunak too the visit challenges those that say Britain outside the EU is no longer a geopolitical player, but ranks alongside Paris where Zelenskiy travels next.
For Zelenskiy this wartime visit, his second abroad after the eight-hour trip on 21 December to the US Congress, was equally important.
In recent weeks he has asked his wife to take on the burden of the foreign diplomacy, leaving him at home in solidarity with his people in combat. But as the war reaches a decisive moment – an anticipated Russian spring offensive nears – he has had to risk further overseas travel. The first anniversary of the invasion is only 16 days away.
Zelenskiy has been acutely aware that somehow one year on he has to keep the war in the forefront of the wandering western mind. Earthquakes, domestic politics and music awards compete for the news agenda.
In Time magazine’s landmark profile in December, Zelenskiy admitted: “People see this war on Instagram, on social media. When they get sick of it, they will scroll away.” He explained this was human nature and horrors have a way of making us close our eyes. “It’s a lot of blood,” he said. “It’s a lot of emotion.”
Zelenskiy has sensed the world’s attention flagging, and this concerns his aides nearly as much as the Russian bombs. Most nights, when he scans his agenda, Time reported, his list of tasks has less to do with the war itself than with the way it is perceived. His mission is to make the free world experience this war the way Ukraine does: as a matter of its own survival.
Standing in his fatigues next to the speakers of the Lords and Commons his message was simple: “Do not forget Ukraine or this war in Europe.” Leadership is about visibility, as the Lords speaker, John McFall, told Zelenskiy.
So if the previous trip to the US had a purpose in stiffening the sinews of wavering Republicans, the visit to the UK was less about shoring up support. It was about gratitude, ceremony, and genuflection to the unique grit shown by Britain in the second world war, a theme of the more explicitly Churchillian speech he delivered in March by satellite.
The most substantive section of this speech was an evocation of how much was at stake in the war. The war was not just about Ukraine, Zelenskiy said, but changing the world and the threat to international legal order. Claiming Britain was “marching with us in a coalition of friends, and values”, he promised in the future there would be “no grey areas where human life does not matter”.
The war in Ukraine was not quite a war to end all wars since, he said, it was impossible to erase evil from human nature, but it would allow the better side of humanity to prevail. “After we win together, any aggressor, it doesn’t matter whether big or small, will knows what awaits him if he attacks international order … any aggressor is going to lose.”
But behind the rhetorical promises of a “new history”, the visit contained practical demands. Somehow avoiding sounding like an ungrateful Oliver Twist ever asking for more, Zelenskiy deftly asked for combat aircraft for Ukraine, or what he described as wings for freedom. In practice the UK does not have the aircraft Zelenskiy needs, but by announcing Britain will provide the training of Ukrainian pilots, the UK is preparing the way for Europe to offer planes.
He also spoke of the new coalition of long-range weapons striking deep in Russian occupied territory, the need to take Vladimir Putin to a war crimes tribunal, and the need for more effective sanctions.
Zelenskiy will have been pleased that at prime minister’s questions, opposition leaders took up these themes. But in practice the UK government is ambivalent about the wisdom of a special war crimes tribunal to try Putin in The Hague.
The sanctions the UK announced of Putin’s circle have a performative element. What matters more is how the west is going to stop the flow of oil revenues to the Russian treasury despite the imposition of price caps on crude oil and oil products. Sanctions experts are fiercely divided whether the caps are working. Equally, there is growing evidence that China and Turkey have been willing to fill trade gaps, including that of semiconductors. But the UK may be willing to move on the issue of whether seized Russian assets can be given to Ukraine, the subject of a bill tabled by the senior Labour MP Chris Bryant.
Finally Zelenskiy spoke of victory, but did not provide any definition – perhaps by laying out how much was at stake, the speech did not need to descend into the details of geographical borders. Those harder conversations may await him when he speaks to Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Wednesday.
