JRL NEWSWATCH: “Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelensky” – Time
“Zelensky’s success as a wartime leader has relied on the fact that courage is contagious. It spread through Ukraine’s political leadership in the first days of the invasion, as everyone realized the President had stuck around. … During his childhood, Zelensky’s grandmother would talk about the time when Soviet soldiers came to confiscate the food grown in Ukraine, its vast harvests of grain and wheat, all carted away at gunpoint. It was part of the Kremlin’s attempt, in the early 1930s, to remake Soviet society, and it led to a catastrophic famine known as the Holodomor — ‘murder by hunger’ — that killed at least 3 million people in Ukraine. This topic was taboo in Soviet schools, including those where both of Zelensky’s grandmothers worked as teachers. …. But they would mention the history of the famine at home. …”