KNOCKING
- Hello? - Good morning, Mr Holoborodko.
Can I connect you with Angela Merkel?
- Yes, you can connect.
- NEWS ANCHOR: - An actor, known for his TV role
as President of Ukraine,
is now set to take over that position in real life.
- He was extraordinarily popular.
He impressed immediately, like, "Wow!"
- He played the kind of character
that Ukraine was dreaming about.
- Ukraine is a place where the destiny
of this century will be hammered out.
- EXPLOSION
- We're going to be surrounded
within 40 minutes or so.
- This is a threat to democracy
for the world.
Imagine, imagine being in that situation.
- I think it's the President
who can really tell this story.
- CHEERING
- Nothing could dampen the sheer exuberance
that welcomed in the 1990s, as an explosion of colour and sound
released the pent-up emotions of the past decade.
- The most evocative symbol of
the divide between East and West,
the Berlin Wall, is open
to East Germans to walk through.
- Vladimir Putin watched the fall of the Berlin Wall with horror.
When the Soviet Union collapsed,
the kind of...the security guys,
the power guys, the spook guys were on the back foot.
By this point, Putin's a mid-ranking KGB spy,
working undercover in communist East Germany.
And as demonstrators were trying to storm the Stasi building...
..he called Moscow for instruction, and he said Moscow was silent.
- Boris Yeltsin had come to bury the Soviet Union
and to build the new Commonwealth.
This will not be a single state,
rather, a collection of independent countries.
The Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
- Many people here find it hard to trust the Russians.
They blame them for years of suppression of
the Ukrainian culture, and they're worried that
Russia may not accept the Ukraine as an equal partner.
- While Putin is fuming back in Russia,
a teenager called Volodymyr Zelensky
is coming of age in the new Ukraine.
Hello. - Hello. - Mr President, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. - Thank you very much, yes.
- My colleagues. - Yeah.
Hi. - Hi.
- Through this mirror, can you see me? - I see your face.
- If you could go back to
the 16-year-old Volodymyr...
- 16? - 16.
..and tell him that he would become President...?
- When I was 16, no.
No. But it's not...
Of course, of course I had another dream,
another view of my life, of future.
Really, I think that people who are 16,
they don't think about future, they think about today, really.
And today, when I was 16,
I was not thinking about any politics, any mission.
Your future is next week. That is your closest dream, your...
Something like this.
- What WERE your dreams?
- I was very free.
It's the end of Soviet Union.
Young people, what they want?
They want to be free, they wanted to see the planet.
And to go where? Everywhere.
Just for some dreams.
You just want to meet, speak,
and your eyes are big.
And, of course, I wanted to find me in this big world.
Of course, my parents wanted me to be, you know, er, calm,
to be calm, yes, and to study, and that's it.
I found time for everything.
Freedom, it's a great thing, freedom.
- It's an amazing journey.
Zelensky, he came from
eastern part of Ukraine,
industrialised and, you know, heavily populated.
The new generation
wanted to become a new,
successful Eastern European country.
- I love my city. It's not capital,
and it's, like, what do you love?
You love people who are around you,
so people, girls, boys who are from your childhood.
- Thank you.
Uh, did you order a coffee?
- No, whisky! - Ah!
- Friendship.
I loved my city because my childhood was there,
because my friends been there, near me.
Great time.
We had nothing, but we had everything.
- I saw him...
We had an English lesson in my class,
and the teach...it was speaking.
And she went off, and she returned in five minutes
with two very young kids. It was a very, very tall girl
and a very, very small boy.
And teacher said,
"Speak on this topic - London.
"Volo, show them how to do that."
And he started like, "London is the capital of Great Britain,
"situated on the River Thames," and I was really shocked because...
..his voice didn't fit to his size, because he was really small.
Day by day, gradually, we became friends.
- I didn't know Volodymyr yet,
but his father, um, study...was a teacher.
I teach technology in the '90s.
He was very charismatic and very funny.
And all students,
we know that he is very honest.
- Zelensky inherited from his father principles.
And on the other hand is his mother.
Humble, very loving Jewish woman.
- Long hair.
Guitar, long hair.
Rings, earrings,
something rock and roll.
- Were you cool?
- I think...
I think...
You have to ask my wife, of course.
But, but...I think, yes.
- He was cool, yeah.
- So, he was a little bit of a troublemaker?
- He was always.
- Really? - Yeah.
- Is that what you found attractive?
- Um, being honest, no.
- So, when did romance start?
- One of the best, I think, moments in my life, when I met my wife.
I just looked at her and I think I just loved, and that's it.
I saw her at school.
When we began to speak,
when I understood who is she,
and I hope she understood who am I...
- Did that take some time?
For me or for her? - For her.
Sorry!
I don't know.
- I saw Volodymyr the first time like an actor.
Volodymyr, with his friends,
took part in a competition.
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
- And I remember, "Best actor is...Volodymyr Zelensky!"
"Me? Me?" And, "Yes. Yes, you!"
His eyes, it was like big plate.
After that, he believe in himself.
You know, when the universe,
er, priznayut, recognised you.
- He was very good comedian,
and we were big fans of KVN.
- This show, KVN,
was legendary in the Soviet times.
If I tried to describe it to you,
it would be kind of televised competition of stand-up comedians.
It gained an extraordinary,
enormous popularity.
- We decided to make our own team.
You have to improvise.
You have to show things that you've been rehearsing. The main thing,
it have to be funny.
- I was on the jury.
Oh, he impressed immediately,
because he was making fun of everything.
- Hello...
- I remember, he makes a joke on...and very rude jokes
on the President.
"SOS, America, SOS".
In Russian, er, he's speaking,
it sounds like "suck me".
- Suck me? - Yes!
The show, for many young people,
was the only platform for irony
and, sometimes, even satire.
And that's why it was absolutely unexpected for Russian viewers.
I believe they managed to make
the only political satire
in the former Soviet Union.
- Clever.
THEY SING
- We loved him immediately.
And basically, he won
this Ukrainian league of KVN.
And he was invited to do, with his team, the run for Russian league.
That was, in that time, considered to be the kind of Premier League.
- Moscow League, they show you
on TV, on primetime.
It was the top.
There's nothing higher than that.
- CHEERING
At the same time that Zelensky discovered that
his entertainment skills could win an audience, Vladimir Putin
had discovered that his gifts for
surviving had taken him to the point
where Boris Yeltsin made him
Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.
He was made Yeltsin's heir.
- Mr Yeltsin now has named him as
his chosen candidate in next year's
race for the presidency.
Mr Putin's task will be to build up his own support
and destroy Mr Yeltsin's political opponents.
- Putin coming to that, why would he have done that?
- You know, to use the...
I would say to exploit the popularity of the show.
- SINGING
- This show has an extraordinary, enormous popularity.
He used this chance to be seen
able to smile, to laugh,
and there were a few jokes about him.
He said, "We're going to Kyiv
"to start our own company."
He was always saying kind of, "Let's do it. We'll succeed."
- What was Volodymyr Zelensky's role
in all this?
- I'm a big fan of basketball... - Mm-hm.
- ..and I can compare it to
Michael Jordan in Chicago Bulls.
They won everything because of him.
He's a kind of locomotive
that pulls the train.
Not only frontman on the stage,
he's main writer, chief editor,
he made decisions in finances,
he was a leader in everything.
And I always trusted him because
I believe that he has his lucky star
that leads him, that helps him.
- Putin's first visit as President
was meeting the Prime Minister
and for talks in Number Ten.
- We're just doing to go right down here...
- We are beginning to build up what looks like a useful relationship.
- Prime Minister, how are you? - Thanks so much. - Not at all.
- Really great. Really enjoyed it. - Glad you enjoyed it, thank you.
- Putin, you could see he was trying to put on the charm.
Putin was very controlled,
would occasionally try to show a bit of humour.
- Language is already pre-set.
Er, Russian is on channel three.
- Next time, make sure that the Russian is on channel one.
- LAUGHTER
- The thing that struck all of us about Putin
was his eyes - very small, rather cold.
We were asking ourselves
if he was for real about wanting to build up relations with the West.
All went pretty well and was very
constructive, except for one moment.
- Right.
Er, one last question, I think, is all we've got time for, so...
- I wanted to ask President Putin that there are many concerns
in Britain and elsewhere about the conduct of the war in Chechnya.
How does he propose to show people in the Western world
that those fears are misplaced?
- Putin became highly emotional,
almost paranoid.
He really couldn't discuss it in any kind of rational way.
And I would discover,
talking to Putin's staff,
that he wouldn't just do this with
foreigners. They would say to me,
"Look, it's impossible to talk to him, he just gets angry."
After the 2004 election,
Putin became a much more confident,
much more assertive individual,
and unpleasant things started happening.
In Ukraine, mysteriously,
a pro-Western candidate for election was poisoned.
- NEWS ANCHOR: - Now, more on this
developing story about the poisoning
of one of the presidential candidates in Ukraine.
- Viktor Yushchenko has claimed
he was poisoned by his political enemies.
- Nobody knows who did it,
but it looked a little bit like a KGB operation.
The Russian intelligence services
have a well-known, long history of
poisoning people they do not like.
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
- With that particular show,
Zelensky has become
extraordinarily popular in Ukraine.
So he set up his own company with his partners,
and he started to produce more and more shows.
And the only step left for him not exploited and not explored,
that was movies.
- Volodymyr said, "Sometime,
"I will be on Oscars stage,
"and all audience will applause to us,
"to us and our job, our work."
- LOUD BUBBLING
- Ah, Russia!
- His movies were
extraordinarily popular
in Ukraine, but also, in Russia...
..with millions of people watching.
What can you have more
in that particular moment? What could be more? Nothing.
But, you know, as always in life, that was something between
the complete dramatic change,
turn of the circumstances,
and so it turned out to be
the end of the whole epoch.
- Boris Yeltsin's funeral
was a symbolic moment for Russia...
..marking the transition from one order to another.
By this stage, it was Putin's Russia.
At Yeltsin's funeral,
very significantly, we see Viktor Yanukovych.
He is the Ukrainian that Vladimir Putin wishes to have in power.
It was absolutely critical, from Putin's point of view,
that he should control Ukraine.
- Without Yanukovych,
Zelensky might have never left
the world of entertainment.
In Ukraine, Yanukovych was practically...
..the boss of the organised crime group,
not even trying to hide it!
I met him.
Yanukovych was always a bandit.
He was a typical, you know,
considered to be a typical criminal.
- Putin eventually got his wish,
and Yanukovych became President of Ukraine in 2010.
- Soon after he became President,
Ukraine was being plundered by Yanukovych and his friends.
On the outskirts of Kyiv,
he builds a naff estate,
with a pirate galleon and a zoo.
He had turned Ukraine
into a laughing stock.
He looted the state, he made his dentist son a billionaire,
and he jailed his main opponents.
- Mr Yanukovych denies allegations
of embezzling state funds,
or of hiding millions of dollars
in foreign bank accounts.
- Ukraine has been pretty badly governed since 1990,
but it's always had freedom of expression.
And one could see younger people
who wanted Ukraine to be a more honest,
better governed, more European country,
and Zelensky is the embodiment of it.
They're not against Russia,
but they were pro becoming part of Europe and the European Union.
The turning point was when
Yanukovych tore up an agreement with the European Union -
which was basically a symbol,
a sign that Ukraine was integrating with the West -
and accepted a bail-out from Vladimir Putin and Russia.
Erm, and there were protests.
- CHANTING
NEWS REPORTER: - People have come
throughout the day, surging out of
the Metro with European Union flags
with the national flag of Ukraine,
and they are rallying in the centre of this square.
- CHEERING
- Yanukovych was under a great deal of pressure to clear the square.
He was getting clear signals
from Moscow, from the Kremlin,
to put down the rebellion,
and it led to a series of
increasingly violent clashes with police.
- REPORTER: - This is a scene of absolute chaos.
The police are throwing stun...
- EXPLOSION
- There is total...
- This is a major political crisis in Ukraine.
- The Maidan Revolution,
what impact did those events
have on you, personally?
- A lot.
I think all of us - I mean, about our group -
we thought, how to help this situation?
We didn't think about any, you know,
political future, or something. It's not ambition.
It's not my ambitions, in those times, without any thoughts.
You... You...had to make a choice.
What is the price of your life? Yes.
- In the car, going there, did you plan what to say,
or was it just spontaneous?
- I planned. I...
First of all, we are honest.
We decided at the very beginning of our dialogue. - Please! - Yes. All...
All... All which is spontaneous,
you...you have to prepare something.
I drived to the studio,
of course, I thought, what I have to say?
I have to address to everybody I can.
You feel that you can help now,
and you want just to address something to help with something.
What I had, I said.
I understood that if, of course, I was popular,
it was important because my messages would be not only to Ukraine,
also, to Russia, I was very popular in Russia.
- It's stunning,
because he - already, in 2014 -
is talking to Putin as an equal.
That's the moment when the comedian
stopped joking and became serious.
- REPORTER: - This CCTV footage
appears to show Mr Yanukovych's
entourage fleeing by helicopter.
The former President's current whereabouts are a mystery.
- Putin's man in Ukraine, Yanukovych,
has been ousted by a democratic protest.
So this is a humiliation for Putin and, at this stage,
Putin feels he has got to do something to get his own back...
..so he goes for Crimea.
- REPORTER: - A platoon of troops deployed this morning around
the main airport in Crimea.
This is sovereign Ukrainian territory.
These were not Ukrainian troops.
- Then he did a second thing.
He sent troops into
Donetsk and Luhansk,
eastern provinces of Ukraine,
and he started a war
in those two provinces.
Putin claimed, "We are not ourselves fighting in those regions,"
but it was entirely obvious
to the world, they were.
- Many people inside of Ukraine
cut off the ties with Russia,
and most important challenge was for Zelensky.
Zelensky needed to choose between
the Russian prospects of business
and Ukrainian identity.
- Can you work? Can you...
Can you sell products to Russia?
When you have company, a lot of people, they need work
and they need job, and business between a lot of...
But you have to choose.
So the decision was, we stop.
We will stop all the relations.
So we closed the offices, and we...
That's it. That's it.
And all of us, we wanted to change our work. I mean, this...
Now, this, to do some more movies or TV programmes,
so documentary and dramas, something new for Ukraine.
- And then came Servant of the People.
The premise is quite simple.
You have an everyman -
a school teacher,
who is fed up with corruption
and misrule in Ukraine, and is
talking to his sort of
secondary school students,
and starts ranting about the state of the country.
One of his students films it on a phone, posts it online
and this thing goes viral.
He goes from being an ordinary guy
to running a country.
Zelensky was an actor, but he was telling them something true about
the society in which they live, where there was impunity
for the rich, where politicians routinely stole.
So you see these oligarchs - sometimes, faceless -
around the table, saying they can control Zelensky
and, of course, Zelensky doesn't go according to their script.
- We always had a President
that we wanted to change.
At first, we kind of liked them,
and in a year, we wanted to change them.
And he played the kind of character
that Ukraine was dreaming about.
- What's so delightful about the show
is that it blurs fiction and reality.
So much of it was actually shot in Mezhyhirya,
which was Yanukovych's play palace, on the outskirts of Kyiv.
- Servant of the People has expressed
the willingness of Ukrainians,
you know, to start the newer life, really new life.
Not with the people from the past.
It made people believe
that change is possible.
- He became even more popular
because of the Servant of the People.
He was Paddington.
By the summer of 2018,
he was one of the most popular people in Ukraine.
I remember that the rumours started to fly around.
In different TV shows,
in internet and YouTube,
they started to talk about
Zelensky taking part in elections.
And we were thinking, "So what is that, it's kind of a joke?"
And, of course, we ask him what it's all about.
He was answering in, like, in jokes.
But day by day, month by month,
it was more obvious
that it's not a joke.
That something going to happen.
- So your husband made a public announcement
that he was running for President, and he hadn't told you?
THEY LAUGH Weren't you...?
What did you say to him?
And more important, what did he say to you? What was his excuse?
- She was honest, that's why she was angry.
And I think that, er...
She's smart, and I think she knew about it.
Not from me, but she understood everything before.
Of course, she understood, I think so.
But she was not ready to, you know, to recognise it
and to hear it. She was afraid, because new challenges,
now we see that she was right, a lot of challenges.
Yes, and I...
I did everything oppositely, so I'm...I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I... I...
I can tell now, "Sorry, my love, I'm so sorry, yes." Um...
Yes, difficult decision.
But she understood that I couldn't do other way.
It's the decision of your life.
You... You made this choice,
and if she had opportunity
to change my mind,
I think she couldn't do it.
He's named his political party
Servant of the People as well.
- I was scriptwriter
at Servant of the People,
and now I am speech writer.
It was something new.
We didn't know how it works. We didn't know how...
We didn't know what is a political election campaign,
er, actually.
We don't have a big budget.
We have one office and 30 people. That's nothing.
- Zelensky's main opponent was Petro Poroshenko, the incumbent President.
- Poroshenko was always challenging Zelensky for the bid.
And the basic idea of Poroshenko was very simple,
to demonstrate the ignorance of Zelensky.
- CROWD CHANTS
- Zelensky came up with a great idea -
to do the debate in
a very familiar format. The show.
The performance. Stage.
With an audience.
- Poroshenko was the war guy,
who would fight Russia, who would support the military
who were in the east, fighting this kind of brutal war.
Zelensky said, "I am the peace guy.
"I will bring peace to the East.
"I will sit down with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
"and we will reach a settlement."
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
REPORTER: - When will you stand up to Putin?
- Are you ready to be President?
- I... I don't know. The people will decide it in the evening.
- CHEERING
- I understood everything, before election,
it will be very difficult, very difficult.
And at this moment, you understand that...
..it's not about difficulties, it's about another life.
That's it. Another life.
- To find out more about Ukraine
and some of the influential people whose stories have shaped it,
go to bbc.co.uk/zelensky,
and follow the links to the Open University's interactive gallery.
- Volodymyr Zelensky!
- CHEERING
- He was extraordinarily popular. He impressed immediately. Like, "Wow!"
- He played the kind of character
that Ukraine was dreaming about.
- Ukraine is the place where the destiny
of this century will be hammered out.
- EXPLOSION
- We're going to be surrounded
within 40 minutes or so.
- This is a threat to democracy
for the world.
Imagine...
Imagine being in that situation.
- I think it's the President
who can really tell this story.
- CROWD: - Zelensky! Zelensky!
Zelensky! Zelensky!
Zelensky! Zelensky! Zelensky!
Zelensky!
Zelensky! Zelensky!
Zelensky!
- I remember him, when he won the elections,
and he called me and he said, "Listen,
"it's only for one term,
"we will fix it up, it's going to be much better,
"and I will go back, and then I'm going to be just 46 years old
"and I will produce my movies and I will win my Oscar."
- CHEERING
- I was a scriptwriter of Servant of the People, and now,
when Volodymyr became President,
I continue my work with him as speech writer.
- FANFARE
- To become a President,
but to stay a man.
Human.
- APPLAUSE
- You played a President
and then you became President. What was the difference?
- Different things. Pfff!
Different things. Even... Even I can't compare.
So it's...
This is very difficult work.
- There were very serious challenges
that he was going to face from day one of taking the presidency.
Zelensky has a phone conversation with Donald Trump,
the President of the United States...
..in which, Trump essentially seemed to say,
"We'll continue giving you military aid if you do us a favour."
He wanted an investigation that would dig up dirt
on Trump's political rivals.
Namely, Joe Biden and Joe Biden's son, Hunter.
As Zelensky and his team landed in New York
for the UN General Assembly, all of this was coming out.
- Zelensky finds himself embroiled in
this enormous shit-show.
News of this phone call
leads to impeachment proceedings
being launched against Trump...
- I think it's ridiculous. It's a witch-hunt.
- ..and Zelensky is straight away in an impossible position.
But the truth is, Trump did ask him to find dirt on the Bidens.
- I will say this, I know a lot of people
from Ukraine. They're great people.
And I owned something called the Miss Universe Pageants years ago
and I sold it to IMG, and when I ran for President,
I thought maybe it wouldn't be the greatest thing to own
the Miss Universe and Miss USA Pageants. But it's a great thing
and we had a winner from Ukraine, and we've really had...
We got to know the country very well, in a lot of different ways.
But it's a country, I think, with tremendous potential. - Yes.
I know it, because I am from that country. - Right.
- LAUGHTER
- Thank you very much.
It's a great honour.
- Thank you very much, Mr President.
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be involved
to democratic, open elections of USA.
No, you heard that we had, er,
I think, good phone call.
It was normal. We spoke about many things.
And so, I think, and you read it,
that nobody pushed...pushed me, yes. - In other words, no pressure.
- Some people tell that Servant of the People is a fairy tale.
It's not.
The story is about one man
who tried to broke the system and...can't.
- In the TV show, Zelensky and his fellow comedy writers
are in control of the reality - they write the script.
In the real world, Zelensky is not
in control of who he deals with
and what words come out of their mouth.
Reality is out of his control.
- As well as problems with Trump,
he also has problems with Putin.
Putin has effectively occupied
a chunk of eastern Ukraine
and annexed Crimea.
- In 2014, Putin used special forces,
without any insignia,
to go in and take over Crimea.
He got away with it, nobody did anything,
and so, he started the ongoing
conflict in Ukraine's east.
- REPORTER: - For the last five-and-a-half years,
Moscow has been arming, funding and many would say
directly controlling fighters in two
rebel-held parts of eastern Ukraine.
- Putin was still denying that they're there,
and saying, "Oh, these are separatists", and, "These are..."
You know, "Russia's just a facilitator.
"We're trying to reach a peace agreement here." Total nonsense.
- When Zelensky took power, his number-one promise
to the people of Ukraine was to bring peace in the Donbas,
to find a resolution, and he knew that he could not do that
without communicating with Putin.
- Many Ukrainians think that Zelensky is being a little bit naive
and that Putin can't be negotiated with.
- In your previous work, you say
you were popular, you were a star.
Mostly, people loved you.
You become President. By necessity, all politicians, much criticism.
How did you cope? How did you deal with that?
- It's a difficult moment because mostly,
people loved me, that's true.
And then, this is a new pool.
HE LAUGHS
I wasn't... I think at the very beginning, I wasn't ready
to swim in such pool, yes.
It's another part of life.
But... But, er...
But maybe...
Maybe I have to do something.
Maybe they will love me again.
- So Zelensky heads to Paris,
where he has his first and only
meeting with Vladimir Putin.
- Zelensky set out very early in his administration to talk to Putin
face-to-face, look him in the eye, and say, "What do you want from us?
"How can we end this war
"that keeps sending our soldiers home in caskets?"
The French and the Germans played the role of mediators.
- Zelensky was always saying, "Look, while building my career,
"I could negotiate and I could achieve results,"
and he hoped that Putin will be convinced.
- CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICK
- There is this nervous atmosphere
in the room, and then, we need to leave.
And we were watching it on a screen
and they were sitting in the neighbouring room.
Zelensky's approach was like,
"War is terrible, war is killing.
"We are sitting here, let's just finish it.
"We have the power to finish it."
That was the major message of Zelensky.
Putin tried to close the doors all the time.
Like, "We're not there." Like, "There is no Russian troops there."
- Putin flat out lied
in the press conference,
saying, "This is an internal Ukrainian matter.
"Ukrainians need to settle this."
I think this was a big eye-opener for Zelensky.
He thought, I think, that everyone understood what Putin
and Russian forces were doing in Ukraine,
everyone's trying to resolve this, and instead, I think he realised
that, actually, this is an effort of three sides
putting pressure on Ukraine to give things away.
It's a different game here.
Neither Macron or Merkel said a word to contradict Putin.
- There were a lot of things unresolved,
but if we have these first steps already there,
then perhaps you can continue, right?
And Zelensky really believed that there will be other meeting.
But Putin never wanted to meet Zelensky again.
- INTERVIEWER: - Vladimir Putin,
what do you think about his psychology?
What's in... What's going through his head?
- I had meeting with him, long meeting,
in December 2019, in France...
..and, er, it's not about...
He's not... He's not a person...
I mean, that humanity.
He has... It's not about this. It's like...
..people who just do the job.
You know? Without any emotions.
Without any, you know... It's like killers. Yes?
It's just a job.
What is the problem?
That he lied...
..very much.
For me, it's a part of my life, this job, and I really...
I love Ukraine and I want, you know, peace,
and we want to remember this period of time
and want people to respect me.
That's it.
For these... And that's it. But this is a part of my life.
Putin, for him,
all this war is his life.
REPORTER: - China says the number of people infected
by a mysterious virus has more than tripled.
Scientists say the virus is being spread by human-to-human contact,
and that is especially worrisome...
- Putin's story is a kind of dark fairy tale.
I mean, this is a man turning 70,
sees very few people,
doesn't use the internet,
he doesn't have a mobile phone.
He relies on briefings from his close friends.
We're talking about six, eight, ten people.
And this isolation increased during the pandemic.
He was holed up in his presidential palace...
..and he brooded.
I've seen him scuba-dive
to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
I've sat in a room with him. I've tried, unsuccessfully,
to ask some questions at press conferences. I never got picked.
But what I can say is the most dangerous incarnation of Putin
that we've ever seen is amateur historian Putin.
- During lockdown,
defence intelligence said he'd written an essay, and so we read it.
It was like reading Mein Kampf.
It basically tells us that the world is united
around the ancient people of Rus...
..and these people need to be
reunited. The Baltic states
don't really exist. Even parts of Finland aren't really true.
What he really showed was his desire to...build a greater Russia.
- In the essay, Putin argued that Ukraine was never
a nation or a state or a people.
Actually, that's rubbish.
Despite periods of being part of the Russian Empire,
Ukraine always had a kind of strong democratic tradition.
It was actually a sort of flourishing early civilisation,
going back to the 9th century.
Ask any Ukrainian, and they'll tell you Kyiv is older than Moscow.
And back then, 1,000 years ago,
Moscow was forest and bog.
- The title of Vladimir Putin's essay
was On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.
It sounds like the kind of thing you would glance at and toss aside
but, actually, it's a manifesto for war.
- REPORTER: - These could be the biggest
exercises on Europe's border since
the Cold War, to make sure that
Russia's armed forces are ready for
whatever threats, or opportunities,
present themselves next.
A massive show of force
right on the border with Europe.
A simulated counterattack
of a scenario which they rehearse every four years.
When they left vast amounts of weaponry close to the border...
..it effectively, to me, confirmed this was not normal.
We learnt, from satellites,
intelligence and evidence of
mobile crematorium, which is a horrendous concept in itself.
Crematorium to hide
evidence of their own deaths.
At the time of the September,
I was busy trying to persuade
within government that we needed
to get on with it, and there was
a resistance, because it might provoke.
A lot of the argument would be, "Ooh, you don't want to escalate."
And I would say, "The game has already started. The game's afoot."
- Every year, for 20 years already,
we make a New Year show.
For 17 years before, we made fun of other Presidents
and other politicians, and now him.
Everything was changing in Ukraine.
And I was... I really was scared for him
because I didn't know what's going to happen.
- The United States were saying,
"The war is coming",
Germany and France were saying, "This is just sabre-rattling".
Different people come to your office.
One says there will be a war, someone else says no.
Third person says, "I don't care whether there will be a war
"or there will not be a war, but our economy is suffering
"just from the fact that we're talking about it."
And everyone is smart,
everyone is full of knowledge and analysis,
but everyone is there in the room
just to give advice to the President.
And, in the end, all the responsibility was on him.
- You were receiving intelligence
about the potential of invasion
with the President and discussing how to present this to the public.
How did you make those decisions?
- Can Russia categorically rule out the invasion of Ukraine?
- We have no intention to do that,
so it means that we have no intention to do that at all.
And it has been said on different levels, of course.
- OK, what, then, are the troops doing
massed along the Ukrainian border with Russia?
- Troops are exercising, and it is no secret
that they are preparing to deter any kind of threat.
- REPORTER: - The Ukrainian government is doing its best
to reassure its people there is no cause for alarm,
and that calming message is largely working on a population
which is sceptical that the risk of war is as high as the West fears.
But there is only one person who knows the fate of this country
and, so far, President Putin
is playing his cards close to his chest.
- REPORTER: - The White House is calling the situation, meantime, quote,
"Extremely dangerous".
- There are two paths.
There's a diplomatic path, there's the other path. It is up to
the Russians to determine which path they're going to take.
- We believe that diplomacy continues to be viable.
There still remains a window to resolve this
through dialogue and diplomacy.
- The logic of the situation seems to be clear -
that Putin has assembled such a colossal force...
..we think that the orders are already starting to be issued
for people to take their forward positions.
We read his crazy essay. We, we, we...
He's obviously...
Very, very difficult for him now to walk this thing back.
- Nice to see you. How are you? - Thank you very, very much.
Volodymyr Zelensky, he was in a very, very peculiar position.
If he had sounded the alarm bell, you know,
and sent out the whole of Ukraine into panic stations,
that, paradoxically, would have helped achieve Putin's ends.
You could tell that he was under terrific pressure,
but it's not clear to either of us
what is actually going to happen.
It was one of those situations where I was trying to pump...
I was sort of saying, "Come on, come on..." You know,
"What do you really think is going to happen? What do you think
"is really in Putin's mind?" And he was saying to me,
"Well, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think
"Putin's bluffing?" And I said I...we didn't know.
- Mr President, do you believe that the Prime Minister
and his American allies are exaggerating the threat from Russia?
- During the press conference with Boris Johnson,
I thought that Zelensky was perhaps
not quite on top of events. That this great storm was coming
and he was still, perhaps, looking the other way.
I mean, one former diplomat I spoke to said that
he's always two or three steps behind events.
- We are free.
- At the time, Zelensky's opinion poll ratings
were slipping. They were going downwards.
- At this work, you have to be honest.
But, er... But, er...
..sometimes, you don't want,
and sometimes, it's really very difficult.
Just... Just difficult.
There are some moments when you...
..when you understand that if you'll be honest,
it will make so many, so many problems for people, or for you.
I mean, we are part of society, so...
It's...to be brave.
- We flew on a RAF jet into Moscow.
We were rushed in to the Ministry...
..with the Minister of Defence, Shoigu.
- General. Thank you.
- Gerasimov, Chief of Defence Staff.
And they put on a display of the Arctic convoys
and what we had done together.
- HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
- The monument of all the countries
which helped Russ...the USSR.
- We had a good meeting. It was, you know, recorded and in public.
None of us wish to be
in an atmosphere of
insecurity, anxiousness.
I have buried too many soldiers in my time.
And then we had an after-meeting, where the Chief of Defence Staff
went with Gerasimov and I went with Shoigu.
A fireside chat, I think it was called, or a one-to-one.
I remember him saying, "We will not invade Ukraine."
I think when a Defence Minister of such an armed force
sits opposite you and says it with a straight face,
you knew you were being lied to.
I remember saying on the way out to someone,
"Somewhere above me, in a room above where we've just sat,
"somebody has got a map on the wall."
- I believe you had a phone call with Putin.
- It was one of those creepy phone calls of a slightly sort of, erm...
..er...
..with a sort of semi-satirical flavour - at least, from his side.
He made this sort of slightly creepy remark about, erm,
nuclear weapons and, you know, "I don't want to use a nuclear weapon
"against you, Boris", or something like that.
He was saying he was ruling out an invasion.
"There'll be no..." You know, "Not going to happen".
I kept saying to him that he would be nuts to invade.
We kept coming back to this question of, what was the ultimate future
of Ukraine? And I remember him saying to me,
"Well...", you know, "..when is Ukraine going to join Nato?"
And I said, "Well, look, not any time soon."
And he said, "Not any time soon? What does that mean?
"Is that not next month? Not next year? When does that mean?"
And I said, "Well, it means not till...not for any time soon."
But I couldn't say
Ukraine will never...join Nato.
We had to insist
on the right of the Ukrainians
to choose their future.
- Quite a few people thought that Zelensky was not up to it,
actually, that he didn't have the fight or the kind of wisdom.
What sort of struck me, as a kind of writer,
as an observer of people and things, is I would walk round
the centre of Kyiv and there were no sandbags.
There were no preparations. There were no tank traps.
There were no checkpoints. There was no panic.
- REPORTER: - In this historic city,
where they are being told
by Western leaders to expect war at any moment,
they are busy, and they are calm,
and they are dancing.
- Was this a clever strategy by Zelensky to fool the Russians
into thinking the Ukrainians were totally unprepared...
..or was it, actually, that Ukrainians
were, on some military level, unprepared?
- There are more and more Russian troops on the border
every single day. The White House is telling
American citizens inside Ukraine to get out now.
- Depart immediately.
We want to be crystal clear on this point.
- And all day, we have seen a flurry of countries
with the exact same message - "Get out".
Secretary of State Antony Blinken just announcing
that the United States will be closing their embassy
in the capital city of Ukraine.
- I was sort of sitting in the front row of a press conference.
- Please, let's stick to the scheme,
with one question from each journalist.
- Sorry. Erm... Thank you very much.
I asked Zelensky, I said, "Look, the foreign ambassadors are leaving."
The American ambassador had moved west, the British ambassador
had followed. Was that the right decision?
I'll never forget, he said, "We do not have a Titanic situation here."
It's curious, because you think about the Titanic
and you sort of think, is the Titanic Ukraine,
heading towards the great Russian iceberg?
Or is, actually, Russia the Titanic -
this hubristic, arrogant, superior nation -
that, unwittingly, is crashing towards the big disaster?
- Russian troops currently have Ukraine surrounded.
We believe that they will target Ukraine's capital, Kyiv,
a city of 2.8 million innocent people.
- He had his excuse.
Putin was creating a pretext.
- REPORTER: - The two regions in question are Donetsk and Luhansk,
and diplomats warn that recognising these as independent states
would give Russia the justification it wants to send in troops.
It was like a kind of loyalty test.
There was Putin, sitting like a kind of reproving headmaster,
surrounded by kind of white and gilt, and there was his government.
He was asking them to endorse his plan.
Sergey Naryshkin, the head of
the Foreign Intelligence Service,
when he's asked to make this kind of oath of allegiance...
..fluffs his lines.
What's clear from this is they are all terrified of him.
Absolutely terrified.
- Putin, I think he's not alone.
I think there are some similar guys in the world. But...
But not everybody has such, you know, such, erm...
..such chance for their selves, yeah,
to open all their, you know, negative, or all their evil dreams.
Yes. That is the problem, that the West didn't recognise him before
and didn't stop him.
- Zelensky sent me to Washington
to talk eye-to-eye
to the US officials, to get the fullest possible picture
of where we are heading to - the timeline.
And, most importantly, what would be the reaction of the United States,
what would they be doing?
- Mr Kuleba, it's an honour to welcome you back to the Pentagon
at this critical, critical moment in history.
- I am on a diplomatic mission here, but...
- We had a series of briefings at the very highest level.
We were told that there was a good prospect
that there would be an invasion,
and some...some speculation
about when that would happen.
Among the agencies of intelligence,
there was a high level of confidence about this.
- A lot of the observers thought
that Kyiv was going to fall,
that President Zelensky was going to fall,
and that Ukraine was going to fail to exist as a country.
- Russia was determined.
It outnumbered Ukraine on every level.
I mean, its air force outnumbered Ukraine 13 to one.
- Who knows, perhaps they thought I was the last Ukrainian
they might ever receive in the White House.
President Biden, he showed me around,
and there is a room behind Oval Office...
..and I asked him, I said, "Listen, I...
"I must tell you that I feel torn apart...
"..between two choices - whether I have to be a minister or a father
"when it comes to the need to evacuate my children,
"because now, I realise, more than ever,
"that the war is...the attack on Ukraine is going to happen."
And he looked at me, he paused, like, for a second,
looked straight in my eyes,
and he said, "Be a father".
That was it. I sent text to my dad, I told him,
"Pack yourself, pack kids - you're leaving Kyiv tonight."
- I was very threatened, of course.
It felt like it's really going to happen.
And I took my kids, my family,
and I went to...western Ukraine.
I was in a rather safe place, and the only thing
that I remember about that, I was very scared for him.
I mean, I knew that he was a name.
They wanted him. They want to kill him.
- I was in Kyiv on February the 23rd.
It was normal. Bizarrely normal.
People out and about, people in restaurants.
I walked out into the street and I took a call from a contact of mine,
a Ukrainian contact of mine, very well-placed,
who just said a few words - "The invasion will begin at 4am."
- EXPLOSIONS
SIREN WAILS
Sounds.
EXPLOSION
Sounds of missiles, of bombing.
SIREN WAILS
EXPLOSION
The phone rings. I've got the ring
from intelligence to Army,
and they said that we...attacked by Russian.
We attacked from the north.
It was first missiles from Belarus.
EXPLOSION
Said to my wife she has to be ready
and, "You will come to me, to my office,
"and please tell children that Russia attacked us."
It was very quickly. Very quickly.
And I was here, and I was the first here in my office.
- I'd woken on the morning of the 24th very early,
talked to Volodymyr.
It's just a sort of surreal conversation,
and he describes the invasion.
Where it's happening.
Er, the scale of it, which seemed to be huge.
- EXPLOSION
- You know, like, I was sleeping.
5am, I think, I got a call,
"It's started. Come over."
I go to the office.
And then, I was driving. The red signals...
Through the street, it's about... Normally, it's 40 minutes' drive,
but I drove there in 18 minutes, I believe.
- EXPLOSION
- On my path, I saw explosions.
When I came to the office, there were six people.
We did not have this, you know, situation where we are in this room
where you see everything in real time with cameras.
It was all, you know, pieces of information coming to us,
so we could not really recognise in the beginning
the size of the problem.
- I took a call from a contact of mine
inside the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, who said,
"You're going to have to move hotel. There are going to be street battles
"outside your hotel. Get out."
- EXPLOSIONS
- There were millions of people leaving.
The highways were full.
It was like millions of atoms had
been shaken and violently agitated.
It did feel like the end of days,
and probably, the whole of Ukraine
will be swallowed up.
Everyone was having these
existential conversations - "Do I stay? Do I go?"
- We came to the shelter.
We had this communication device. It's a secure communication,
like a suitcase or something, with the video conferencing.
Er, US Embassy and the State Department, basically,
and the State Department said, "We prepared the helicopter",
so they kind of planned the evacuation operation.
- At this stage, I'm thinking, we're going to have to get
Volodymyr Zelensky to a place of safety,
where he can go into some sort of either internal
or external exile and mastermind a resistance.
- The security came and said, like, "We have bulletproof intel
"that...", you know, like, "..we're going to be surrounded
"within 40 minutes or so,
"so we have only 15 minutes to go, if we decide to go."
Zelensky brought us. There was the Prime Minister, Yermak, Sybiha...
There was, like, five guys, or six guys. He says, like, "Listen,
"everybody has his own family, his own life, so I'm not judging you.
"If you decide to leave now, leave now."
He says, like, "If we are not here,
"people will stop fighting."
It was a real decision...
..between death and life.
- I think when the history of the 21st century is written,
that that is probably the most powerful short video of our time.
He was going to stay, and he was going to die.
He went from being a good leader to being a great leader,
to being Winston Churchill with an iPhone.
- I... I was not surprised.
I know him.
It's his personality.
- To find out more about Ukraine
and some of the influential people
whose stories have shaped it,
go to bbc.co.uk/zelensky,
and follow the links to the Open University's interactive gallery.
SIREN WAILS
EXPLOSION
- When you were told that your husband was target number one
for the Russian Army, what did that do to your mind?
- Volodymyr Zelensky!
- CHEERING
- He was extraordinarily popular. He impressed immediately. Like, "Wow!"
- He played the kind of character
that Ukraine was dreaming about.
- Ukraine is the place where the destiny
of this century will be hammered out.
- EXPLOSION
- We're going to be surrounded
within 40 minutes or so.
- This is a threat to democracy for the world.
Imagine...
Imagine being in that situation.
- I think it's the President
who can really tell this story.
- EXPLOSION
SIREN WAILS
- Security came and said, like,
"You have to go to the shelter."
Zelensky said, like, "Number-one thing that we need..."
He said, "I don't need machine guns.
"One or two more will not help you if...", you know, like,
"..but make sure we have another Starlink,
"because if we lose internet, this is going to be a problem."
Because we needed to communicate all the time
and we needed internet for this.
Here, it's total uncertainty. Totally.
Nobody knows what to do, what is the right way to do.
Nobody can teach you, mentor you, or whatever.
Every five minutes, you'd get a call from somebody like
President of United States, you know, France, Norway - you name it.
It was all in our, you know, one room.
When you get a call from one person, it's like, "Macron is calling."
"OK, tell him I'll call him back in five minutes."
- ZELENSKY: Russia, that is very terrible, what they do.
So, you know, they are now
in some more cities.
The centres of some regions.
They have tanks, airplanes.
Already, they are there,
and now they're in Kyiv.
We are fighting in Kyiv, Emmanuel.
- They are with special forces
and helicopters, or...?
- Yes, aeroplanes and helicopters, everything.
We see it in video.
We see it, everything. A lot of them.
- Do you have an idea on how many civilians were killed already?
- No. Thousands.
- And what about you?
Are you in security yourself?
- I think so.
- Are you sure, or do you think so?
- I think so, I'm sure.
I think nobody is in safety situation now in Kyiv.
I think so because we are in the circle of Russian Army.
- So, which means that they sent special forces...
..everywhere in Kyiv?
- Everywhere. In Kyiv, in Odesa,
and from Belorussia.
So we fight everywhere on our territory. Everywhere in troops.
We wouldn't imagine that... It's not the same like it was in 2014.
So, it's much better... Much, much, much more, I mean.
It's much more. - Mm.
No, it's clear. It's total war.
- Yes, total war.
- OK. Erm...
OK. - Yes.
So, I think, Emmanuel, it's very important you to speak with Putin
and very important to make an anti-war coalition.
We are sure that European leaders and Biden can connect
and they call him and say, "Stop", he will stop.
He will listen you.
And what I want to say, just stop the war and speak with him.
- But he will... He will ask where you are ready to go.
You're ready to sit down around the table and start negotiating?
- Of course. - OK. - We have to. Of course, we have to.
- OK. Volodymyr, as soon as I have feedback from this side,
I will do it, and let me refer to you on what we can do.
I mean, for sure, very few things on the Russian side,
but let me see with my people what could make sense to help
on this issue.
- OK, thank you. - Now, take care.
- Thank you. Bye. - Take care.
- Oui.
Bon...
- SIREN WAILS
I made a lot of different decisions quickly those day.
It was the longest day, I think, of my life.
The longest one.
Yeah.
I'm really thankful that I have such...
..such...
..a possibility to...to do what I can for Ukraine.
I wanted very much to do something,
but I've got...
..this chance to do everything.
SIREN WAILS
- Zelensky started to communicate,
to speak out, and actually
address the Ukrainians,
with his own tone
and with his own, you know, ability to feel empathy.
- CHILD CRIES
REPORTER: - Putin's forces are advancing from the north, the east
and the south, and the capital, Kyiv, is now under direct threat.
- Everybody in the country started to be prepared for the fight.
We started to give away the weapons on the street.
- REPORTER: - The Ukrainian government is literally handing out guns
to citizens, and authorities are encouraging people
to make their own Molotov cocktails and prepare for what could be
a long, ugly insurgency.
- Slava Ukraini.
- Everybody wanted to fight Russia. I saw
old ladies making camouflage nets,
students bottling Molotov cocktails.
- Nobody thought that this would be how we would spend our weekend.
Like, nobody thought. But now, we're doing this,
and it seems like the only important thing to do now.
- At first, erm, we were scared.
Really scared.
But now, we are ready to fight.
And, like, fight like hell, so...
- APPLAUSE
REPORTER: - All around the city, they are building defences.
The streets are scattered with scrap-metal spikes and tyres
and huge metal anti-tank hedgehogs.
- Zelensky had transformed.
He looked, not like a soldier,
but he looked like a civilian volunteer.
Bear in mind that his team, a lot of them are showrunners.
They worked on Servant of the People.
They understand TV, they understand how you tell a story.
I think that was also a way that he brought everyone with him.
- EXPLOSION
- The world leaders were frozen...
..in decision-making.
I spoke to Zelensky.
He said, like, "If we cannot reach properly to the leaders,
"then we have to reach out to their voters and they will listen."
That was his... That was calculated.
He said, like, "We have to wake them up."
- REPORTER: - So, in the past hour, we've heard that President Zelensky
of Ukraine is going to address the European Parliament.
- APPLAUSE
- I think his acting skills,
of course, helped him,
but he was...
Er, the main reason of his success is that
he was sincere.
- He was focused. He pressured
the international community,
he embarrassed them, if he had to.
- APPLAUSE
- When a few countries were dithering,
Zelensky was punchy and...didn't let them off.
- And our Union, for the first time ever,
is using the European budget to purchase and deliver
military equipment to a country that is under attack.
- APPLAUSE
- You now have the floor, President.
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
- The back of my neck started sort of tingling
because, of course, he referenced Shakespeare. "To be, or not to be".
And, of course, those were Ukraine's options.
You know, to be a free, proud, democratic, successful,
Westward-orientated country, or to be a satellite of Russia -
to become Putin's slaves, in effect. To be, or not to be.
I think he has a great gift of, erm,
both inspiring sympathy,
but also, being fantastically optimistic.
- APPLAUSE
CLAPPING AND CHEERING
- Because he came from TV comedy shows
that everybody can identify with,
he struck a chord with the global public
in a way that no other Ukrainian leader could have done.
- CHEERING
I brought from those time to this job
this communication with the people, because you have to try.
I really...
..loved people because I communicated with them.
And if you don't love,
you will be tired.
CROWD: - Heroiam slava!
- Zelensky's ability to communicate secured
the level of support, the number of weapons,
and the quality of weapons that Ukraine got
to really turn the tables on the Russians.
- Zelensky was telling me
he was a Jewish and little - in terms of the height -
guy in Kryvyi Rih,
a very industrial city.
So he was beaten,
I believe, in the childhood.
He always said, like, you find the guy who is the chief,
punch his face, and then all other people realise that you are,
you know, like, the good guy to deal with.
- EXPLOSION
- Not many people believed that
we will be strong and stay more than
three days against second army
in the world. We stay.
We continue surprise.
- What enabled the Ukrainians to sort of stop
this mighty Russian war machine was pluck and bravery.
- Hi. Nice to meet you.
You're very welcome.
Each day, you have to do something for people.
Something... Maximum you can during the war, of course,
maximum you can. But do what...
Do what you can.
LAUGHTER
- In one of our interviews, he said,
"People see this war on Instagram.
"When they get sick of it, they will scroll away."
So he knew that time was limited.
- CHEERING
CHANTING
CHEERING
BELL CHIMES
- Can you see your family?
- No. No.
I can't.
Work and sleep, that's it.
I worked a lot.
I always worked a lot.
Because I knew that...
Always, I knew that if you want to get the result...
..and if you want to show quality of your job, of the result of your job,
you have to work a lot.
You have to study a lot. A lot.
When everybody work, you work. When everybody sleep, you work.
That is my answer.
- Did you manage to ever communicate with him?
- I got the call from someone
of the Zelensky team,
and this guy said, "OK, put us in touch with someone.
"We need to speak with this bastard."
Yeah.
- So they were asking you to find... - To put them in touch...
- ..with the Kremlin? - With... Yeah. Not with the Kremlin.
- But somebody who had Putin's ear. - Somebody who would be able to...
Yes. - Did you? What did you do?
- I called Roman.
- Roman Abramovich? - Abramovich.
I called him. It was six o'clock
and he was in France.
I said, "So, listen, these guys want to talk to you."
He said to me, "So, you want me to play the political games?"
I said, "This is a war."
That's how it started. And I
put him in touch with the people.
And that's... - Zelensky's people? - Of course, yeah.
- We formed a very quick delegation and the President said, like,
"Davyd should run it."
I said, like, "Yeah, I'll try it."
I never had any diplomatic experience,
so I had no clue what I'm going to do,
what I'm going to talk to, and we went.
We were six or seven of us.
We were nervous, honestly.
You're coming to the enemy territory to talk.
The Minister of Defence had two security guys,
who advised him
not to eat, not to drink - nothing.
First thing I did, like, when we came, they give...
It was like a kind of hotel.
I opened the fridge and there was some sausages and everything.
I ate everything. I said, like, "I'm going to be the volunteer."
I ate everything. I said, like, "Sounds good. Let's go and talk."
They had this stereotype.
Black ties and so on.
I came with a hat.
On the first session, when they were saying,
"Listen, you don't have any chances to survive
"because we've got so big, powerful army",
I said, like, "Listen, while we are talking now,
"we already gave away on the streets 150,000 guns.
"When we finish today's session, it's probably going to be a million.
"So don't tell me, like, that we have no chances."
And that was, like... They were writing down, you know,
all this reports. I was bluffing a little bit. There was probably
ten times less. But I made an impression.
We needed to buy the time.
Every day that I was buying, we got some new stuff coming through
Polish border. You know, like, the weapons and stuff.
- You've sent your delegation to meet
the Russians for talks. - Yeah.
- Is there any hope, as the world watches, for diplomacy?
- First of all, everybody has to stop...stop fighting,
and that is very important moment.
If you do this, and if those side is ready,
it means that they are ready for the peace.
If they don't ready, it means wasting time.
- And do you think you're wasting your time,
or do you think they're ready? - We'll see.
- On the fourth round of negotiations,
I moved it to Istanbul.
The Russians brought 100-people delegation.
They are victims of their own propaganda.
I found the formula how the Russian really works.
First, he writes some crazy theories,
then they put this on TV,
then they watch their own TV and start to believe it.
And it's like a cycle. It's like it's real.
And when we were talking to these people,
they really believed that we have, like, full of Nazis
killing people on the street, all this stuff.
150 million people living in this country,
they're watching the TV and they are believing these things.
- What happens when you point out the President is Jewish?
- That was my biggest argument. It's like,
"How the Nazis would elect a Jewish President?"
It was, like, kind of put them in a bad position.
And they said, like, "This is some special UK operation!"
This is always a good answer for any insane thing
that you need to confirm.
We agree about everything except the territories,
and the territories is up to discussions
when Putin and Zelensky meet in person.
Three or four times, there was a possibility they will finally meet,
but Putin wanted to meet only to sign a pre-agreed document.
I offered, "If you just need to sign, you can use Docusign", I said.
"There's software for this. You don't have to meet.
"If you don't want to discuss anything, why do we need to meet?"
And they was like, for these old guys, like, "Docu, what?"
I said, "Docusign. Docusign.com."
You know, like, I tried to...
I need to buy the time, anyway, you know,
so I gave them some time for research.
- Once the Russians were defeated in the Battle of Kyiv,
they left behind these crime scenes,
these towns, in cities like Bucha...
..where horrible atrocities took place.
- Zelensky was in Bucha a few days
after the Russians pulled out.
People were being tortured, raped,
disappeared,
butchered.
- When you see hundreds of bodies of innocent people killed
in a small city which is considered to be the suburb of Kyiv,
so damaged, so devastated.
And I remember Zelensky and his face,
and he was killed by that.
Bucha, psychologically, changed everything.
- I wanted to ask about Bucha and the visit there,
and the effect it had on President Zelensky personally.
- He... He was shocked.
He was... It's... You know, it's...
It's one of the most terrible days in our life.
It's still in...in our eyes and in our heart and, uh,
and it's impossible to forget.
- When Bucha happened, the first two days, they tried to persuade myself
that this is a spectacle
that MI6 built to shock the world
and get some more weapons.
This is like, they really believed in that.
President called my mobile.
He realised that they are not the kind of people
that we could get an agreement with.
He said, like, "Tell these assholes to go home."
And he said, "We come after them."
- What looked like a weakness
turned out to be
the strongest point of Zelensky,
the strongest, you know, side of his nature in Ukraine.
His ability to be...
..actually, to feel for his people.
He kept this personality of the human being.
- BELL CHIMES
MILITARY BAND PLAYS
Putin, he's from Soviet period.
He's Soviet person, but, you know, my parents,
also from Soviet period.
But it's something different.
To be the President of Russia, to attack Ukraine,
to kill persons in Germany or somewhere,
I think for him, it's a job.
I... I'm not Putin,
so I will not be 30 years, or...25 years, President.
I will not be. - Really? - No.
No. Trust me! HE CHUCKLES
And... And so it means that after this job,
I have to go through this job...
..to be respectable
and for even...even respect myself.
For me, it's very important, for my family, my children.
For me, it's very important.
And to help Ukraine, to do what I can,
the best way I can.
- Putin can't accept defeat.
He's decided, at this point, that he will outlast
their ability to resist,
he will wear them down, he will bombard them.
Putin is completely indifferent
to the loss of human life. Always has been.
- SHE SOBS
- When you have to make decisions which you know are likely
to lead to the death of men and women, how do you manage that?
- That is the most difficult...
The biggest difficulties in my life.
Because I...
When I... When you make some of such decisions,
..for me, it's difficult always.
I have a lot of questions to myself.
And there are some questions on which
I didn't get, till now, answers.
All these questions are about lives.
I saw this... I remember these people - a lot of them.
I saw a lot of parents - a lot of them.
I gave orders, Golden Stars for the heroic...
..heroic deaths of these...of their children,
or of their husbands and wives. And that is...
That is a big, big challenge for me.
I think the biggest one.
SOMBRE MUSIC
- How often do you see your husband?
The woman we spent an hour and a half with two days ago,
your wife, the First Lady... - Hour and a half?
INTERVIEWER LAUGHS
That was long.
- She was generous with her time! - That's great.
That's great.
I'm happy that you had this chance.
Not always, I have such chances, so...
Nice to meet you. Thank you for coming.
- Zelensky underwent an extraordinary transition
from comedian and movie star
to now, a leader of a country
at war, courted by politicians,
Prime Ministers,
Presidents and movie stars.
- Hi, Sean. - Hello, Mr President.
- Nice to meet you. - Great to see you.
- You are welcome. - Great to see you again.
- You're looking good. - Oh, thank you.
This is for you. - No, Sean!
- Yes. - No! - Please.
- That is yours. - No, I feel terrible outside...
It's just a symbolic, silly thing... - Yes, but it's...
- But if I know this is here with you,
then I'll feel better and stronger for the fight.
- It's so great, great honour, but until we win.
- When you win, bring it back to Malibu.
- Great. - Yes. - Great, OK.
- Because I'll feel much better
knowing there's a piece of me here.
- We have to win.
We have to win quick.
- Zelensky and the Ukrainians
achieved an incredible military victory,
but it became clear, by the end of 2023,
just how difficult and, erm,
how long this war could be.
- Ukraine's struggle
is an existential one,
and one with profound consequences
for our century,
and which system prevails -
the one of democracy,
self-determination, or the one of
dictatorship and brute force.
And the two personalities at the heart of this tussle
couldn't be more different.
- APPLAUSE
# Gory, gory
# What a hell of a way to die
# Gory, gory
# What a hell of a way to die
# Gory, gory
# What a hell of a way to die
# He ain't going to jump no more... #
APPLAUSE
- Putin is playing the dirty gamble,
expecting the West to get exhausted to support Ukraine,
and betray it.
And Zelensky is trying to unify
the West in support of Ukraine
and inspire the Ukrainians in fighting the Russians.
And this is a fight of years.
- The longer the war goes on,
the harder it gets for Volodymyr Zelensky.
- The Ukrainian Army desperately needs to enlist more troops.
- The fervour, the enthusiasm,
the queues of patriotic volunteers wanting to fight has dissipated.
- Every time I come back and see my Ukrainian friends,
they show me a video of someone they know who's been killed.
Zelensky has faced some criticism.
The election which was supposed to take place in May of 2024
was cancelled, understandably.
But there is a certain amount of unease.
There are worries about
corruption in Ukraine.
Some people suggest Zelensky
hasn't dealt with corruption effectively enough.
And I think the biggest problem of all is that Ukrainians
just don't know how long the war is going to last.
Five years, ten years, 20 years? We don't know.
- I don't think any one of us is able even to imagine
this grade of pressure he has, of burden he has on his shoulder.
- In many ways, he's quite difficult to recognise.
He's no longer...
..the funny man.
He's not surrounded by just a gang of friends any more.
- As a part of our history,
we have to pass this way.
And it's great that we have such a leader
in such a tragic part of our history.
And I'm really proud that he's my friend.
- Do you think about life after the war
and what you and Volodymyr will do?
Is your husband an optimist?
- I think he's the greatest optimist.
In this situation, especially.
- How do you keep going? How do you manage?
- I have to.
It's... I understand that I have to.
I can't betray the people's choice
and their...I mean, this belief in me.
And I love Ukraine.
And I love to... What does it mean, "love Ukraine"?
I love... Everything...
The best what I had was in Ukraine and with Ukraine.
My wife, my children,
my movies in my previous work,
and my presidential choice.
So everything what I have, this is Ukraine.
That's why I have to.
- Thank you. Thank you. - Thank you so much.
Thank you. - It's very good of you to give us so much time.
- Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. All the best.
To find out more about Ukraine and some of the influential people
whose stories have shaped it,
go to bbc.co.uk/zelensky,
and follow the links to the Open University's interactive gallery.