How a poet’s gift for rhetoric – and Boris – helped Zelensky defy Putin

WaRS aren’t won by soundbites, more’s the pity for Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukraine president has a poet’s gift for rhetoric.

‘If you don’t help Ukraine today,’ he warned the West as Russia attacked in 2022, ‘then tomorrow the war will knock on your door.’ That grim prediction seems increasingly likely to come true.

Of the many ministers and diplomats analysing the invasion in Putin vs The West: At War (BBC2), Zelensky possesses by far the greatest flair for the dramatic. addressing the European Council via video link from his capital, Kyiv, he warned, ‘I don’t know if this is the last time we’ll see each other. I don’t know if I will still be alive in the coming hours.’

He is alive, but the physical toll this war has taken on him is unmistakable. Clips revealed he has aged 20 years in as many months.

Zelensky was an actor before he was a politician, and he knows how to wring the emotions, as Britain’s ambassador to the United nations, Barbara Woodward, revealed. Speaking on screen at a Un conference, he announced he wanted to show a video illustrating the inhumanity of Russian troops.

‘This video probably lasted for no more than a minute,’ Woodward said, ‘ but you can pack a lot of atrocity into a minute.’ Viewers of this two-part documentary were spared the worst, but Zelensky’s point was powerfully made.

So too was his plea for aid: ‘You have at least 20,000 tanks,’ he told nato leaders, before asking for, ‘one per cent of your battle tanks, one per cent of your planes, one per cent of your artillery. Give it to us or sell it to us.’

What the West sent has not been enough to secure victory, only an endless attritional stalemate. This episode offered few criticisms of nato’s cautious response, though Boris Johnson did express his frustration that we were unable to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

This might have saved thousands of civilian lives but the risk of provoking Russia into all-out war on Europe was judged to be too great. ‘no matter who tries to stop us,’ threatened Vladimir Putin, ‘Russia’s response will be unrelenting and it will lead you to such consequences as you have never faced in your history.’

Boris showed his contempt for Russia’s bluster by joining Zelensky on a walkabout around Kyiv, though he admitted he kept scanning the rooftops for snipers.

Whether that really was the Kremlin kingpin talking or just a Putin lookalike wasn’t clear. Of all the conspiracy theories and misinformation stirred up by this war, the rumour I enjoy best is that Western intelligence agencies believe the real dictator has a pet goat which is his constant companion. If the goat isn’t nearby, it’s not actually Putin.

Dr Xand van Tulleken was investigating rumours and exploding fake news as the morning medical show Con Or Cure (BBC1) returned.

‘Today,’ he announced, ‘we’re asking the question, does cheese at night give you bad dreams?’

Scientific evidence disproves this old wives’ tale, he said, ignoring the more obvious issue of whether it gives you bad breath. no one wants to share a pillow with a partner who has just scoffed a slab of Stilton.

He and co-presenter ashley John-Baptiste also warned us against the internet craze for ‘ neck- cracking’ or twisting your head till your vertebrae pop. Explaining why this could cause a fatal stroke, he waggled the skull of a skeleton called Skinny Pete.

Mind you, anyone stupid enough to pull their own head off because of something they saw on TikTok is unlikely to listen to a doctor’s advice.