Zelensky has questioned, in a searing speech to the U.N. Security Council, the very value of the United Nations if it cannot act more strongly. He has also asked if Russia, after what it has done, should be allowed to continue as a permanent member of the Security Council.
He has called for a new international security system, arguing that the current structure has proved inadequate in this moment. He has called out the Germans in caustic language for continuing to fund the Russian war effort through the purchase of oil and gas. He has challenged allies repeatedly.
President Biden also has used his bully pulpit to project — sometimes in undiplomatic ways — his own sense of moral outrage toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and the atrocities Russian military forces have inflicted on Ukrainian citizens during two months of war.
Biden has called Putin a war criminal. He said in a speech in Poland that the Russian president should not be allowed to remain in power. In the latest example just last week, he accused the Russians of genocide as more evidence of indiscriminate civilian killings, some execution style, around Bucha and Mariupol was revealed. Biden said he would leave it to international lawyers to determine whether what the Russians have done qualifies as genocide, but added, “It sure seems that way to me.”
Biden and Zelensky likely know the limits of their rhetoric versus the realities of what they are facing. There are obvious risks for both, though different for each leader. But in leveraging their positions, they have added something beyond realpolitik to the broader discussion about the implications of the war for the world at large and for what will happen when the conflict subsides.
Biden has used his platform to say things that presidents don’t usually say out loud (though the same sentiments of many Americans toward Putin) — whether it helps or hurts him politically and whether the words result in policy moves consistent with the rhetoric.
Zelensky’s character and moral compass have been displayed by his willingness to challenge those upon whom he is most dependent and to raise uncomfortable questions about a world order that seemingly cannot stop the Russian slaughter.
Zelensky remains the remarkable leader through the conflict, in large part because he had little international profile before the Russians began preparing to invade. He has kept up a steady stream of speeches — to his own people on an almost daily basis and to every national or international body he can find. His presidential website catalogues them all.
Zelensky’s speeches are consistent in their message but tailored to specific audiences. To Congress, he invoked Pearl Harbor and 9/11 to plead for military equipment the Biden administration was reluctant to supply. To Israel’s Knesset, he invoked the Holocaust while criticizing the country for not helping Ukraine. To the Germans, it was the Berlin Wall — accusing the Germans of helping to erect a new wall by putting commercial and economic interests first in continuing to buy oil and gas from Russia.
“What it’s about is to try and put the regionally confined conflict into a larger framework that should incentivize others to see this conflict not just about Ukraine but about their own security and global security,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “He’s very effective about that [by showing] that what Ukraine is facing today is similar to what those countries faced in those instances, all of which had…
Read More: Zelensky, Biden use moral outrage against Russia as weapons in the conflict
