Not that long ago, Volodymyr Zelensky was a jobbing actor in Ukraine, playing the country’s president on TV.
The series, Servant of the People, was hugely popular, spawning a political party of the same name.
Within a year, the man who was playing the president won the role for real, getting a whopping 73 per cent of the country’s vote on an anti-corruption ticket.
As a political novice, other European leaders and career politicians who had spent decades climbing the greasy pole to high office were unconvinced.
But the last few days have changed everything.
Zelensky – poised but with a controlled anger, calm but with real conviction – last week sent a message to Russian president Vladimir Putin that the bloody invasion of his sovereign nation would never succeed.
On Friday, he released a sombre video warning EU leaders that “this might be the last time you see me alive” as Russian special forces are hunting him down in a bid to assassinate him.
“We’re all here,” he told Russia and the rest of the world from Kyiv, “Our military is here. Citizens in society are here. We’re all here defending our independence, our country, and it will stay this way.”
As missiles continue to rain down on the country, he is prepared to die for his people’s right to choose their own government. And he is rightly demanding the Western world do more than churn out mealy-mouthed words of condemnation and sanctions that have little immediate effect.
The Ukrainian president showed his mettle and that of his people. A politician in a bulletproof vest whose life was on the line, speaking with both clarity and conviction and showing unfaltering leadership in the face of real horror. All depressingly lacking in the so-called much more experienced Western leaders he’s asking for help.
Presidents and prime ministers whose words we have come to realise more often than not mean very little, men who lie at every turn and take responsibility for nothing. Leaders who have failed to live up to election promises and ignore attempts to hold them accountable. Who appear to make policy on the back of a fag packet and think they are above the laws of their lands.
Leaders who don’t listen to the people who put them in power. Who failed in their efforts to deal with Covid-19 and turned a blind eye to the real and impending threat from Russia, clearly happy to continue to portray Putin as some sort of Bond baddie in his cold Russian lair who would be unlikely to carry out any of his threats to the West.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave his usual blustering style speech telling parliament of the toughest of sanctions.
All the while ignoring the Tory Party has been funded by Russian oligarch cash that has also bought up half of London.
Then, alongside other virtue signalling leaders, he turned the lights on at Downing Street in the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag.
French president Emmanuel Macron tried to appease Putin but with little success. Joe Biden, the US President dubbed “Sleepy Joe” by his outgoing and bitter rival Donald Trump but elected on such promise, said the sanctions, in conjunction with Euro leaders, were unprecedented.
But the freezing of Russian banking assets, penalties for businesses and a shutdown on technology for military and industrial sectors is never going to be fast enough.
Zelensky wants the equivalent of a financial nuclear weapon to rain down on Putin – the removal of Russia from Swift, the secure messaging system which serves as the backbone of global banking payments.
The world may be in solidarity with Ukraine but, at the moment, it’s all words and not enough action.
Now their president’s life is on the line. Is that what it takes for our leaders to wake up?
Don't miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond - Sign up to our daily newsletter here.
