Zelenskyy recalls trying out Churchill’s chair in ’20 visit

In late 2020, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine was invited to sit in the chair of another wartime leader, Winston Churchill.

Now, more than two years later, with his role drastically shifted as a leader at the helm of a nation engulfed by war, he said he had come to fully realize the gravity of Churchill’s position, he told British lawmakers on Wednesday.

“It is only now that I know what that feeling was, and all Ukrainians know it perfectly well, too,” he said. “It is the feeling of how bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory.”

The comments came on Wednesday as Zelenskyy, speaking to British lawmakers who gathered in Westminster Hall, recalled the visit to London in the autumn of 2020 and a trip to the Churchill War Rooms.

The war rooms are a cavernous, once-secret series of underground offices that became the center of wartime operations for Churchill as he planned the British military operations of World War II. The offices were largely forgotten after the war, but in 1984 they were reopened as a museum, and have become a major attraction in London.

Zelenskyy said that a tour guide invited him to sit down in a chair used by Churchill, and when he did, the guide asked him how he felt, prompting the Ukrainian president’s comments about bravery, hardship and victory.

During the Blitz, as German bombers pummeled London, Churchill and his Cabinet remained in the city. Some have likened the actions of Zelenskyy to those of the legendary British leader.

When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Zelenskyy was clear that he and his government had no intention of leaving the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. In the first days of the war, he posted videos and pictures from the center of the capital, updating fellow Ukrainians on his status, actions that inspired the broader resistance of the nation.

Zelenskyy’s surprise visit to London on Wednesday, announced hours before he spoke to British lawmakers, is only his second visit abroad since the start of the war.