🇺🇦Away from the devastating scenes of destruction, another battle for Ukraine is being fought – an information war.
In comedian-turned-Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, it has found an unlikely hero, writes @harrydq
Thread 🧵👇
telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/0…
🔴Since the moment Russian troops crossed the border into his country, Zelensky has won over countless new fans.
He’s delivered one-liners to raise a gritty smile and defiance to leave audiences in tears. Even his translator broke down and blubbed over the weekend
🌎Across social media platforms, his brief, uplifting clips are shared among tens of millions.
Zelensky is making sure that, from Sydney to Sheffield, Berlin to Boston, foreigners know exactly who Ukrainians are, and rally to their cause
📱He seems to be well aware that 68% of Ukrainians get their news from social networks, more even than television.
Meanwhile, Russians spend nearly 2.5 hours on social media each day, making them the most active users in Europe
It is an understanding of audience-building rooted in his showbiz past.
➡️No one knows more than he the alchemy that such myth-making can have, turning fiction into fact
📺After all, he was propelled to the presidency in the first place by an anti-corruption campaign that blossomed from his role in a hit television show.
His character, a teacher, rose to the Ukrainian presidency on the back of an anti-corruption campaign
🇷🇺Compare that to the self-important media projections of his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin...
...whose own photo-ops – all ice-bath plunging, bare-chested riding strongman – offer a purely unintentional form of comedy
Such winning fluency and immediacy in communications only begins with Zelensky.
🥊Kyiv’s mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, is another former celebrity taking up the information war
🔴As world heavyweight boxing champion, Klitschko arguably had a far bigger public profile before the conflict than Zelensky.
Like many Ukrainian politicians, he too has been using social media to communicate directly with his people
🌐Through his posts, Klitschko, like countless ordinary Ukrainians, enables the watching world to follow the fighting in near real time
Yet social media success, for all its importance, is no guarantee of military victory. War has its own pitiless logic
Read the full story 👇
telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/0…
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