You cannot understand the historic events of 2022 without understanding Volodymyr Zelensky. But the Zelensky effect is less about the man himself than about the civic nation he embodies: what makes Zelensky most extraordinary in war is his very ordinariness as a Ukrainian.

‘The Zelensky Effect’ by Olga Onuch and Henry E. Hale tells the story of Ukraine through the journey of the man who has come to symbolise his country.

In this episode, listen to Henry in conversation with Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s Central and Eastern Europe correspondent and writer, as they discuss how its now-iconic president reflects the hopes and frustrations of Ukraine’s first ‘independence generation’.

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