The Fight of Our Lives: My Time with Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s Battle for Democracy, and What It Means for the World

Journalist Mendel debuts with a brisk and flattering account of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s fight against Russian interference. Mendel, who served as Zelenskyy’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021, traces her former boss’s swift rise from sitcom star to president and contends that Zelenskyy “realized early on that his primary job was to become the embodiment of Ukraine as a fully independent, sovereign state.” She details his efforts to stamp out corruption and limit Russian meddling in the news media and Ukrainian politics, and describes the steep learning curve his government faced in trying to right the country’s struggling economy while dealing with Covid-19 and large “rent-a-crowd” protests organized by oligarchs who opposed his reformist agenda. Mendel also offers a stout defense of Zelenskyy’s 2019 decision to open peace talks with the Kremlin to end the war in the Donbas, and shares tragic details of the current conflict. Though the portrait that emerges of Zelenskyy feels more adulatory than authentic, this is a spirited account of history in the making. (Sept.)