The Patriot Post® · Zelensky Wins Ronald Reagan Freedom Award

We’re not sure who the runner-up was in this year’s competition for the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award, but we suspect he finished a distant second. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is your winner, and rightly so. In announcing the award, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute noted Zelensky’s “courageous fight against tyranny and … his indomitable stance for freedom and democracy.”

“The world applauds President Zelensky and all that he stands for — democracy, individual liberty, freedom, and hope,” said Fred Ryan, chairman of the Foundation’s board of trustees.

It’s rare these days, with world leaders living such pampered lives, when a man and a moment come together as they did late last month, when the Russians invaded Ukraine and the U.S. offered Zelensky safe passage out of the capital city of Kyiv. “The fight is here,” he said. “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

So much for the pre-war New York Times op-ed that ran under the headline, “The Comedian-Turned-President Is Seriously in Over His Head.”

Zelensky, a 44-year-old husband and father, was sworn in as president of Ukraine on May 20, 2019, and he’s become the face of his country’s resistance against their Russian invaders. In a nation that had become known for its corruption — indeed, a nation whose leading energy company, Burisma, had been paying Hunter Biden a million-dollar annual salary despite the fact that he knew nothing about energy and nothing about the country or its people — Zelensky ran on a platform of anti-corruption and national unity. Despite being a political novice and having no military background, he’s earned the respect of his countrymen and those around the world by refusing to flee the capital, by encouraging Ukrainians to take up arms and fight, and by using his communications skills to galvanize the world against Russia.

Like The Gipper himself, Zelensky is a former actor. He was also a stand-up comic, but he’s clearly no joke. All one need do is compare Zelensky’s resolve to that of Ashraf Ghani, our man in Afghanistan who last summer skedaddled as the Taliban approached Kabul, reportedly with tens of millions of dollars stuffed into his getaway chopper.

Zelensky thus becomes the eleventh recipient of the Foundation’s highest honor, whose namesake was, more than any other man, responsible for the ultimate collapse of Soviet communism. Other Reagan Freedom Award winners have included former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, His Majesty King Hussein I of Jordan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President George H.W. Bush, Soviet dissident and author Natan Sharansky, and Polish resistance leader and President Lech Walesa.

“As Americans, we know that freedom is as much a part of us as our blood,” said Ronald Reagan himself. “It’s not a commodity. It can’t be bought, can’t be sold, and can’t be bartered away. The truth is that the word ‘freedom’ is deceptively simple. It’s a word that describes the God-given condition of the human soul.”

Reagan also said, “Tyranny is a parasite that saps the strength of a nation in its sway.” Zelensky seems unwilling to submit his country to that fate.

“I am here,” Zelensky said in a video posted shortly after the invasion, when it was thought that the Russians would take Kyiv in a matter of days. “We are not putting down arms. We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this. That is it. That’s all I wanted to tell you. Glory to Ukraine.”

Glory, too, to Volodymyr Zelensky and his fellow freedom fighters. As Reagan put it, “Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.”