Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is slated to receive a prestigious award for political courage this year from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The Boston-based institution’s website says he is one of five to be honored for placing his career and life “on the line to protect democratic principles.”
“There is no issue today more important than the fight for democracy,” the announcement reads. “These honorees have placed their careers and lives on the line to protect democratic principles and free and fair elections. They embody what [former U.S.] President Kennedy admired most in others — political courage.”
Zelensky was recognized for his “courageous defense and democratic ideals and political independence” in the face of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched on Feb. 24.
In the first days of the multi-pronged onslaught, media reports said Western officials urged him to leave Kyiv and govern the country from Lviv in western Ukraine or elsewhere, with Zelensky telling his interlocutors that he needs “more ammunition” instead of dislocating from the Ukrainian capital.
His presidential staff and advisers have remained in place as has most of Ukraine’s parliament to adopt laws.
The announcement noted that Zelensky “marshaled the sprit, patriotism, and untiring sacrifice of the Ukrainian people in a life-or-death fight for their country – a struggle that endures to this day.”
Reminiscent of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats on radio during World War II, Ukraine’s second war-time president has released nightly video and text addresses to the nation with updates of the war and pleas for more weapons and sanctions to further punish Russia for its unprovoked invasion.
Indiscriminate, relentless Russian bombardment has devastated and reduced whole urban areas and towns to rubble in the country the size of France or the U.S. state of Texas. More than 12 million Ukrainians have been displaced, with over 5 million seeking refuge abroad, the United Nations has stated.
The ongoing war, already in its eight year, is the biggest conflict of scale and scope on the European continent since World War II.
The other four recipients of the “John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award” this year are Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R), Arizona House Speaker Russell Bowers (R) and Wandrea Moss, an election department employee in Fulton County, Georgia.
