“Right now, the destiny of our country is being decided, the destiny of our people, whether Ukrainians will be free, whether they will be able to preserve their democracy.”
Volodymyr Zelensky is destined to be remembered. For his courage, for his leadership, but also for his oratory skills.
The speeches that the president of Ukraine has made to the US Congress, to the British parliament and the German Bundestag have been greeted with standing ovations at the start and finish, and listened to in between in silence by audiences who have been deeply moved.
A great speech is not just about fine words or delivery. These are important, but they are certainly not everything. Zelensky’s speeches had to be filtered through interpreters, suggesting that it wasn’t cadence or fluency that gave them impact.
Instead, it is about three things. First, someone meeting a great moment with an appropriate response. Zelensky’s brave addresses bear comparison to the appeal to the French made by Charles de Gaulle in his famous broadcast of June 18, 1940, when he rallied his countrymen by acknowledging the German invasion before saying: “But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!”
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Zelensky’s speeches, delivered in battle fatigues, more than match these emotionally, and as a response to the moment. Take these words to Congress: “Now, I am almost 45 years old; today, my age stopped when the hearts of more than 100 children stopped beating. I see no sense in life if it cannot stop the death.”
You can’t make a truly great speech on a banal subject at a moment of no importance. But nor can you make a great speech if the words are empty ones. For, secondly, a great speech is about the idea at its core.
President Kennedy’s inaugural address is famous for its brilliant phrasing (“let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate”) but its power lies in its call for a new generation to defend democracy and freedom during the Cold War (“ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”).
Similarly Churchill’s speeches, another example of a man meeting a moment, were not just impressive rhetoric. He was trying to persuade his fellow parliamentarians not to sue for peace.
Zelensky’s addresses are even more pointed. All featured an appeal for more action and his speech to the Bundestag was almost accusatory, with its suggestion Germany had been obsessed with “economy, economy, economy”.
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And finally, a great speech must resonate with its audience. It can’t be boilerplate. Just as Robert F Kennedy touched his audience after the death of Martin Luther King, and King himself did on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, so Zelensky found words on the Berlin airlift for the Germans, resonances of Churchill for the British parliament, talk of Mount Rushmore for the US Congress.
And, as someone who has often spent a full week shut in a room doing nothing but work on one perfectly standard and unimportant speech for a party leader, one can only be awed by such an extraordinary series of addresses prepared under fire.
