Since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has used massive and regular communication to mobilize the international community to support his country. He posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Telegram many videos and selfies recorded at his office or behind a barricade in the capital kyiv.
On social networks, he recounts his daily meetings with heads of state, his visits to soldiers, publishes photos of emaciated buildings and bombarded cities, of wounded taken to hospital or of survivors holed up in bunkers. It shows damage from the war. Since March 1, he has addressed himself directly to Western parliaments to demand more aid, in particular the delivery of arms or the establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, a request refused by NATO for fear of escalation.
“An art of storytelling”
At each intervention by videoconference, Volodymyr Zelensky is applauded, ovation. This was the case, first, before the European deputies, then successively before the British and Canadian parliamentarians, before the American Congress, the German Bundestag and the Israeli Parliament. The Ukrainian president will address this Wednesday, at 3 p.m., to French deputies and senators through a video message. He should renew his call for help to “stop this war”, after three weeks of Russian offensives, the almost complete destruction of certain cities and the flight of millions of inhabitants. And receive, again, applause and marks of support.
“Volodymyr Zelensky is a very good communicator, he has that in his blood. He has an undeniable know-how to pose his voice, to embody solemnity and gravity”, recognizes with L’Express Alexandre Eyries, HDR teacher-researcher in information and communication sciences at the International Management School Geneva (IMGS). The former actor, well surrounded in the writing of his speeches, knows how to solicit the springs that will hit home with his interlocutors. In addition to “a well-mastered art of storytelling”, according to Alexandre Eyries, the success of Volodymyr Zelensky’s communication is based on “the general context”, explains to L’Express Valentyna Dymytrova. According to the lecturer in information and communication sciences at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University, “the Ukrainians are waging war under the eyes of the whole world. And parliamentarians are citizens like the others, who follow the news and see images of war.”
A call to emotions
In his speeches by videoconference intended for parliamentarians, the Ukrainian president, a tired but smiling face, still dressed in a khaki T-shirt, uses several rhetorical mechanisms to get his message across. It relies, first of all, on a “strong argument. It explains what the Ukrainians are going through, designates the aggressor and the values for which they are fighting. Democracy, freedom: Western societies are built on it” , details Valentyna Dymytrova. “He also warns of a possible contagion of the conflict to other countries, which includes them in the conflict”, adds Alexandre Eyries.
To support his point, Volodymyr Zelensky appeals to emotions, pathos. He narrates the human losses, the deaths of children, the destruction of buildings. “It’s a language that we are all able to understand”, agrees the teacher-researcher. In front of the American Congress, he broadcast a striking video: a sequence of images showing Ukraine before the invasion and Ukraine at war. The set was so raw that CNN “felt compelled to apologize to its viewers”, relates the World. In his own discourse, of the “I”, emotion is also present. “He talks about himself as a representative of the Ukrainian people, but also as a human being. He talks about life”, analyzes Valentyna Dymytrova. “There is no overplayed emotionality, it all rings true,” notes Alexandre Eyries.
Historical and cultural references
Especially since each speech is adapted to its audience. This is the third rhetorical device used by the Ukrainian president: the use of historical and cultural references. It was only before the Canadian Parliament where he preferred to use an argument by analogy: “Imagine Vancouver besieged (…), imagine the bombarded Montreal airport (…), imagine the CN tower in Toronto hit by Russian bombs, that’s our reality.” “It’s a classic: it asks people to project themselves, it appeals to a logic of community of interests and values”, explains the IMGS teacher-researcher.
For the rest, Volodymyr Zelensky multiplied the evocations of key moments in the history of the countries to which he addressed himself. To the British, he referred to Wilson Churchill and quoted Hamlet “The question for us now is to be or not to be.” In the US Congress it was Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and Martin Luther King. In front of the German Bundestag – his “hardest speech, which stood out from the others”, according to the lecturer – he mentioned the Second World War and called for the tearing down of the new “Wall” erected in Europe. “Adapting your speech in this way allows you to better contact your audience, to better reach your target”, notes Valentyna Dymytrova. “To make people join the cause of Ukraine”, adds Alexandre Eyries.
What figures for France?
What will Volodymyr Zelensky invoke before the French parliamentarians? “Surely de Gaulle, the resistance”, he guesses. “The Second World War, heroic figures of the resistance, perhaps the French revolution”, conjectures the academic of Lyon 3, while a collection of speeches and an “unpublished address to the French” of the Ukrainian president will be published in May, announced Monday, March 21 the French editions Grasset.
For the moment, only his intervention before the Israeli parliament, which he asked to “make a choice”, has garnered some negative feedback. The Ukrainian president, who evoked his own Jewish heritage, drew parallels with the Holocaust, which was not to the taste of the Minister of Communications. Israel, since the start of the conflict, has taken a cautious position: the Jewish state has neither sent arms to Ukraine nor joined Western sanctions against Russia and oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin, but has launched an attempt of meditation.
Overall, the use of historical references by Volodymyr Zelensky “was well balanced, without overdoing it”, says Alexandre Eyries. If he has the art of knowing how to get his message across to Western leaders, we must not “idealize the figure of the president too much”, tempers Valentyna Dymytrova. “We discover the war through its language, its posture. It is our only means of listening to what is happening in Ukraine, she says. But the Ukrainians, they admire more local heroes, mayors of occupied cities or those who are defending themselves against attacks, people who are in action at their side.”