Evolution of Volodymyr Zelensky’s image in Ukrainian, Russian and German press (based on selected examples)

Abstract

Nowadays Volodymyr Zelenskyi attracts a lot of attention – in Western world, he has become the symbol of Ukrainian resistance against the Russian invasion. A lot of media regularly repeated that the president of Ukraine, although he used to be a professional actor, up against the Russian invasion, has become the man of the state. This paper is the result of researching the evolution of Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s image in Russian, Ukrainian, and German press on examples of – in this order – „Izvestiya”, „Ukrainska Pravda” and „Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. The authors have researched the press from three representative dates: the day of the second round of the presidential election in Ukraine, one day after the beginning of the Russian invasion on Ukraine, and the day of the first anniversary of the invasion. During the analysis, the method of content analysis was used, with due regard to the quantitative and qualitative research methods, as well as the historical genetic method as the support.