Ukraine’s Zelensky Says He Will Beat Russia by Holding On to His Humanity

ODESA, Ukraine—The soldiers put on brave faces for the president. One had lost both hands. Another, a chunk of his hip. A third had a bandage wrapped around his head.

“Have you got everything you need?” President Volodymyr Zelensky asked.

“Everything but my health,” one of them replied.

“You’ll get it back,” Zelensky told him.

A few hours later, on a day when The Wall Street Journal spent several hours with him, Zelensky was still thinking about the soldiers: the one who volunteered for the front after the Russians occupied his hometown, and the handless man whose fiancée stood beside him talking of their future together.

The president had been putting on a brave face, too.

“I don’t have the right to look weak,” he said. “I can’t be weaker than them, and they’re as strong as steel. Even if there are some moments, they should be when you’re alone.”

For 16 months, Zelensky has led the resistance against a Russian invasion aimed at wiping his country off the map. Western leaders and Ukrainian citizens have praised him for his bravery and relentless schedule from front-line cities to foreign capitals.

The personal toll is visible in the crags and lines that darken his 45-year-old face. But on a half-day visit to the southern port city of Odesa, accompanied by reporters from the Journal, Zelensky showed little sign of flagging.

He chatted at length with injured soldiers and medics at a hospital. He chaired a meeting on exports at the port. Then he sat for more than an hour with the Journal, brushing off a couple of attempts by an aide to bring an interview to a close.

Ukraine is fighting a much larger foe and must seek advantages wherever it can, he said. “What can we do compared to Russia? We have to be faster,” Zelensky said in the interview. His relative youth and vigor are an advantage over 70-year-old Russian leader Vladimir Putin, he said. Then he named another: his humanity.

“It’s very important not just to blab, to speak just to say something,” he said. “No, it’s understanding the problem.”

That approach was on display at the hospital, where he went from room to room meeting injured soldiers and their relatives.

Wearing a short beard and a T-shirt emblazoned with his country’s name, Zelensky chatted with the men in the first room for several minutes, posing for photographs and presenting awards.

Nurses, doctors and relatives gathered in the corridor and peered inside. Among them was Lyudmyla Buhreyeva, the 54-year-old mother of Serhiy Buhreyev, the man who had lost part of his hip.

The family had fled the southern city of Henichesk, which Russia quickly occupied at the start of the war. Weeks later, 35-year-old Buhreyev, a father to a baby boy, Nikita, and 12-year-old Oleksandra, volunteered for the army. He told Lyudmyla: “Mom, don’t cry. We’ll take it all back.”

Buhreyev was defending the eastern city of Bakhmut in March when he was injured in close-quarters fighting. As the Russians closed in, six of the men in his unit surrendered, but he clung on and was carried out, bringing a Ukrainian flag with him.

Lyudmyla hovered nervously outside the hospital room. She said she wanted to thank the president and ask for a photo.

As Zelensky bid farewell, Lyudmyla pounced, embracing the president, kissing him and saying, “I adore you!”

Zelensky returned to the room for more photos.

After presenting awards to medics, Zelensky and his entourage piled into vehicles and sped off.

The convoy rattled over cobblestone streets as locals drank coffee and walked their dogs in the sunshine. Every now and then, a reminder of the war came into view: metal antitank obstacles and sandbags around government buildings.

The cars swept into the compound of the Odesa Seaport Administration, an elegant, pastel-pink building with tiled floors and a stained-glass window. Outside stands a reminder of a previous war: a statue to port workers who died in World War II bearing the inscription: “No one is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten.”

Inside, Zelensky chaired a meeting about exports from the port, which have been largely cut off by a Russian blockade. As a minister gave a presentation with the help of slides, Zelensky glanced around and fidgeted as if drifting off or distracted. Then he suddenly interjected with a question: “Where?”

The meeting concluded, and the president’s convoy set off again for a government residence, up from the port past the city center’s lively cafes, the baroque opera house and stores with signs in a mix of Ukrainian and Russian. Founded by Catherine the Great at the end of the 18th century, Odesa has long been a target for Russia.

Despite Putin claiming Odesa as a historically Russian city, its inhabitants, including a large number of Russian speakers, have come down firmly on the side of Kyiv.

“I love Odesa,” said Zelensky as he arrived at the interview, lamenting that he didn’t have time to enjoy the city.

The president, a former comedian and actor, joked about needing to sleep for five years to catch up on night hours lost during the war.

He said he has little time to relax, save for a short time around 6 a.m. when he eats breakfast and reads one of the handful of books he has on the go at any one time, from history to fiction, to relieve his mind somewhat.

He also tries to spend time with his son and daughter, helping his son with his English homework.

Switching to English, Zelensky said he does his best. “I think his English is better than mine,” he said.

Asked about his good humor, Zelensky said smiling keeps him human.

“It’s important to stay grounded so you don’t feel like someone on a pedestal in the sky,” he said. “You are an ordinary person, the same person as everyone else, everyone around, with their pros and cons.”

Putin and the Russian elite, he said, have lost touch with reality, oblivious to the deaths caused by their deployment of the Russian military in an attempt to conquer territory against the will of the people there.

“They do not understand the price of life,” he said.

For this reason, he said, there is no chance of reaching a deal with Putin, a compromise to end the war, so the world should instead seek to isolate him.

“Do you want to tame a wolf? Well, it seems to me that very few people have managed to do it,” he said. “It is necessary to behave with him in a way that he understands. He understands power.”

Zelensky’s attention turned back to the injured soldiers. At the meeting at the port, they had still been on his mind, he said, but he forced himself to switch his focus to the matter at hand.

“There is no time for prolonged emotions,” he said, “because the country needs results.”

Zelensky, who entered politics only when he became president in 2019, said he finds it difficult to understand the cool self-interest of some countries and their leaders when so many lives are at stake.

He said he is grateful for Western arms supplies, but finds it hard to accept Western explanations for why they are so slow and in smaller quantities than needed.

“As a person, I do not understand this,” Zelensky said. “Everything is clear to me now I’ve learned it, but as a person…”

Write to James Marson at [email protected]