As Russian tanks rumbled into Ukraine within the predawn a yr in the past, President Volodymyr Zelensky recorded a easy video deal with to his nation: “We’re sturdy,” he stated. “We are going to defeat everybody as a result of we’re Ukraine.”

Amid the swirl of chaotic battles, shifting navy fortunes and the thorny terrain of worldwide diplomacy that adopted, one factor remained fixed: Mr. Zelensky exhibiting up in selfies filmed on his cellphone, to ship speeches and to seem in slickly produced movies beamed into international parliaments, his haggard, bearded however defiant look turning into the face of Ukraine’s battle at dwelling and overseas.

For years, Mr. Zelensky, a former comedic actor, had been dismissed by critics as a light-weight, new to politics, naïve about Russia and buffeted by the political headwinds of a presidential impeachment in america and a failed diplomatic endeavor with Russia. That’s not the case.

After three profitable counteroffensives, wherein his military defeated Russian forces on the battlefield and upended long-held concepts in regards to the stability of navy energy in Europe, Mr. Zelensky, 45, has grown extra assured and battle-tested.

His troopers have reclaimed almost half of the land Russia seized within the invasion’s opening days, and for now have efficiently resisted a brand new Russian offensive. Western nations rallied behind him in high-profile conferences this month, capped by President Biden’s go to to Kyiv on Monday.

And in a lot of the world, Mr. Zelensky has grow to be a family title, representing Ukraine’s tenacity and underdog victories in opposition to Russia. Regardless of carrying T-shirts and having as soon as voiced over the cartoon character Paddington Bear, Mr. Zelensky has been reworked by the battle into a frontrunner on the world stage with as a lot gravitas as some other.

Working within the crucible of violence, Mr. Zelensky navigated the rapidly evolving wants of his military and nation. First, he needed to survive. When the invasion got here and he grew to become a goal for Russia, he refused to be spirited out of Kyiv for security. Pivotal early choices hinged on whether or not and when to easily go outdoors, to videotape his presence within the capital, risking missile strikes.

He has softened his early chiding of international leaders over weapons provides, which irritated Western officers, together with Mr. Biden; he was cordial and diplomatic in conferences with European leaders this month — partially as a result of he has largely gotten what he needed from them.

He has not bent to stress from some Western allies to have interaction in peace talks, sticking to his demand that any deal should embody the return of captured territory — a situation Russia would nearly definitely reject.

Mr. Zelensky has additionally shed the second-guessing he exhibited final summer time about life-or-death navy choices, and has amassed the stature to have the ability to hearth high officers to cleanse his administration of corruption.

“He’s extra at peace with himself,” stated an adviser to Mr. Zelensky, talking on the situation of anonymity to reveal personal observations. “He has a transparent understanding what Ukraine ought to do. There is no such thing as a ambiguity: There is no such thing as a peace with Russia, and Ukraine should arm itself to the tooth.”

As commander in chief, Mr. Zelensky decides key navy questions, like the foremost offensives Ukraine has undertaken, however in any other case delegates to his generals. He’s briefed on battlefield developments early each morning, aides say.

Mr. Zelensky has been accused by his political adversaries of exploiting his wartime authority to solidify his grip on the levers of energy via martial legislation and thru the consolidation of the media.

Tv information broadcasts from a number of channels had been banded into one, for instance, managed by the state, which critics say stifles free speech. The criticism intensified in late December when Mr. Zelensky signed a invoice increasing the authority of Ukraine’s state broadcasting regulator to cowl the net and print information media.

And in a rustic accustomed to pluralistic politics, opposition events have seen in Mr. Zelensky’s management an over-personification of Ukraine’s battle, centered on him on the expense of the hundreds of different high officers and the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians engaged within the battle effort.

Nonetheless, as soon as the invasion started, Mr. Zelensky determined he would want to keep up a continuing public presence, to point out the nation that he was assured and had no worry, the adviser stated.

Mr. Zelensky is usually stated to steer via public relations, and people efforts grew to become a trademark of his outreach — to his personal residents, and to the world.

Analyses of this copious wartime output — in movies, ad-libbed feedback on his cellphone and nightly addresses to Ukrainians — present he has, from the opening day of the invasion, turned to recurring themes: Ukraine will prevail via unity and patriotism, Russia is a terrorist state, and Ukraine will probably be blunt in asking for help from allies.

“Typically, these of us who research politics are typically very cautious of highlighting management,” stated Olga Onuch, a political science professor at Manchester College in England and co-author of a e book on Mr. Zelensky’s tenure in Ukraine, “The Zelensky Impact.” “We are typically skeptical of politicians,” she added. “However his management has been massively necessary” for Ukraine.

Even some within the political opposition earlier than the invasion say that Mr. Zelensky’s publicity-driven method to wartime management has been efficient.

“Earlier than the battle, I used to be a really vocal critic,” Oleksiy Honcharenko, a member of Parliament within the opposition European Solidarity Occasion, stated in an interview. “However I ought to be completely frank: He’s doing an important job as commander in chief. He grew to become the face of Ukraine and a face the world admires.”

By means of the battle, Mr. Zelensky has shifted towards a extra nationalist stance, cracking down on a Russian-affiliated church that was spreading Moscow’s affect in Ukraine, for example, and banning a pro-Russian political get together.

However shut observers of Mr. Zelensky’s presidency say that he didn’t a lot change as match, improbably, into Ukraine’s second of want. By the point of the invasion, they are saying, he had already developed — in his politics, his type and his persona — into the chief the world would solely come to know as soon as the battle began.

By means of 2021, Mr. Zelensky had tried, with out success, to revive talks with Moscow over settling the battle in jap Ukraine that had been simmering since Russia intervened militarily in 2014. And, disregarding criticism of naïveté, in 2019, Mr. Zelensky even surrendered territory to Russian proxies in a coverage of disengagement alongside the entrance line, in hopes of easing talks.

The failure of this initiative, and a backlash at dwelling — with avenue protesters in Kyiv accusing him of treason for surrendering land — steered the Ukrainian president to a political system wherein he rejected concessions pressured by Moscow.

As an alternative, he has wager on Ukrainians’ will to combat and the backing of allies, an method that has to this point proved profitable.

Although Mr. Zelensky made a profession in Russian-language cinema earlier than coming into politics, he embodied the pivot to the Ukrainian language in almost all public settings that many individuals in Ukraine took after the invasion — however Mr. Zelensky started that flip on the outset of his 2019 presidential marketing campaign and early in his presidency.

On international coverage, Mr. Zelensky was schooled earlier than the Russian assault via a brush with American political scandal, shaping his stance on relations with allies. Simply days after his election in 2019, Mr. Zelensky was confronted with a risk of abandonment of navy help by his nation’s most necessary ally, america, if he didn’t bend to a request from Donald J. Trump, then the president, and associates to open a politically motivated investigation of Hunter Biden.

By means of this episode, which led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, Mr. Zelensky started talking in regards to the want for Ukraine, regardless of international help dependency, to be a “topic” in talks with allies, not an object of debate to be pushed round by the inner politics of international nations.

“Zelensky as a wartime president hasn’t truly modified as a frontrunner,” stated Ms. Onuch, the co-author of the tutorial research of his presidency. “Those that are in search of someone born into management on Feb. 24, 2022, must do their homework.”

A extra forceful tone emerged when Mr. Zelensky thought it needed — and it grew to become a trademark of his wartime interplay with allied governments. His relationship with Western allies has at occasions grown tense as he pressured them for extra help and resisted recommendations from leaders like Emmanuel Macron of France that he ought to negotiate a peace deal.

“Ukrainian politicians haven’t all the time spoken up and out in regards to the pressures they face from Western allies, typically mistakenly, typically naïvely,” stated Volodymyr Yermolenko, the editor in chief of the multimedia information platform UkraineWorld. “If Ukraine is to be handled as an equal, he has to clarify Ukraine’s place.”

Mr. Zelensky has repeatedly stated that he’s fortunate to be the chief of Ukraine, a nation with a powerful custom of self-organizing and volunteerism.

“My feeling is he’s led by the nation, relatively than he’s the chief of the nation,” stated Mr. Yermolenko, referring to Mr. Zelensky’s success in channeling the nation’s resilience and anger at Russia. “Zelensky is the embodiment of this resistance however not the supply.”

Mr. Zelensky has labored with at the least two speechwriters, Yuriy Kostyuk, a former screenwriter at his comedic tv manufacturing firm; and Dmytro Lytvyn, a former journalist, Ukrainian information media have reported.

Some speeches wove in elaborate theses on geopolitics or had been redolent with historic references to wartime leaders of the previous, together with Winston Churchill; others had been easy, poignant reflections on the price of battle.

“That is the story of people that lived in Borodyanka,” Mr. Zelensky stated in a speech in Could a few Kyiv suburb bombed by the Russian navy. They “raised and kissed their youngsters earlier than going to mattress and in some way went to sleep and by no means wakened once more.”