Volodymyr Zelensky appears on our phone screens every single day, with the same matter-of-factness with which other heads of state send out press releases to news agencies once a week. When the war began, he did not vanish into a bomb shelter, nor did he confine himself to briefings from the general staff. He stepped onto the global digital stage: an olive-green T-shirt, raw exhaustion, a shaky phone camera, uncompromising in his words, cinematic in his imagery. Today we see a head of state who stands at once in a trench and in a TikTok feed – and who commands both fronts with the same steady hand. He is the first head of state to lead an army and algorithms simultaneously, and his message reaches millions of homes: “I am here, Ukraine stands, help us with weapons and support.” On the one hand, this is enormously inspiring. On the other, this unavoidable visibility raises a legitimate question: where does authentic leadership end and staged PR drama begin?

The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that business has become the world’s most trusted institution, because visibility = trust. The same mechanism applies to heads of state: as a crisis deepens, the public begins to hunger for clarity, a moral compass, and an emotional leader. Zelensky understood this and, in three years, built a personal media conglomerate with an audience of over 30 million, where every platform – Instagram, Telegram, Twitter/X, YouTube – is at once a global press centre, a mobilising recruitment poster, and a sharp diplomatic weapon.

Yet visibility brings its own ethical minefields. When war becomes a live stream, where does the line run between an authentic cry for help and carefully choreographed scenes? When footage of a maternity hospital blown to pieces is framed as precisely as a shot from a Netflix series, who has the right to say that “show” has no place in war – if that show saves lives, mobilises allies, and brings in aid worth billions? As long as Zelensky’s TikTok-era triangulation – moral clarity + visual sharpness – keeps proving effective at rallying support for Ukraine, critics will find it hard to make the case for why a leader should retreat from the screen.

Let us examine the three layers of Zelensky’s visibility – the platform strategy, the fragile boundary between authenticity and staging, and the emotional logistics that move tanks as effectively as fuel. And let us ask: what can leaders in Estonia and the rest of the world learn from a president who proves that winning a war takes both drones and drama?

From war diary to live stream – what Zelensky’s digital command post really teaches

Volodymyr Zelensky does not send out press releases – he speaks straight into the camera. Every video is at once a personal vow and a strategic act. He has created a model unprecedented in the age of war: a leader who does not hide, but fights in front of the camera. 34,596 messages in 1,259 days, or roughly 28 targeted posts every day – a constant, rhythmic barrage that keeps Ukraine’s story relentlessly in view. These are not spontaneous but precisely aimed shrapnel that splinters the information field, boosts morale, and pressures allies to speed up arms shipments. Studies (Sánchez-Castillo 2024; Wang & Wang 2024) show that the Ukrainian president’s digital pronouncements are a deliberate three-layered strategy: emotion → narrative → diplomacy. In this formula, every platform has its function and every clip its role. They work because Volodymyr Zelensky knows that on today’s battlefield the first warhead detonates on Twitter, not in the trench.

1. Strategic digital performance: soldier – influencer – president

Zelensky’s social media strategy is not improvisation but a staged digital performance. Every video selfie, every 15-second clip, and every timed “end-of-day” capsule is at once information, symbol, and emotional trigger. Analyses of his Instagram, Twitter, and Telegram feeds show that at least five or six posts a day create an intense war feed, where a short, visually clear narrative pries open the “victim–perpetrator–hero” triangle and mobilises the audience to lend support. Three separate analyses — Wang (2024) on Instagram, Twitter, and overall strategy, Sánchez-Castillo (2024) with a focus on Instagram Reels, and Domínguez-García (2024) with a study of Telegram — show unambiguously that Zelensky’s team keeps at least three main channels running every day: Instagram, Telegram, and Twitter/X.

Instagram – emotion before logic

On Instagram it is the image that works ‒ and only the image. Zelensky uses it like a war photographer: a close-up of a dusty face, a yellow-scorched band on the sleeve, a signal flare flickering in the background. The post does not explain which city is under bombardment ‒ it makes the feeling visible. Only in the caption or the Story that follows does the explanation come of what he needs from his allies. This sequence ‒ emotion → context → call to action ‒ has worked since the dawn of the photographic age, and Instagram’s algorithm rewards it: the image stops the scroll, the short text holds the gaze, the Call-to-Action leads to sharing. His average view rate exceeds that of NATO leaders threefold.

Telegram – the room for operational orders

The Telegram channel is at once a staff map and a public diary. This is where the nighttime videos appear, in which Zelensky thanks specific brigades, tallies the toll of losses, and addresses logistical details (“Starlinks arrive tomorrow toward Donetsk”). The channel is a push notification to everyone with the app in their pocket ‒ from the battlefield to the Wall Street stock trader. Unlike on Instagram, here speed and trust come first: information must arrive before Russian propaganda.

Twitter/X – the diplomatic remote control

Every one of Zelensky’s tweets works like a short, sharp press-conference headline – journalists get an immediately quotable line straight from it. In his tweet he tags the presidents of allied nations, business leaders, and international media brands, reaching the ministers’ desks, the wallets of big capital, and the screens of Silicon Valley all at once – and all must react in an instant. The structure of the thread is clear: he catches the eye with an opening photo and ends with a concrete demand (“#ArmUkraine”). Everything appears in two languages – in Ukrainian for his own people, in English for the decision-makers, because it is in English that arms shipments are decided.

Every post is a scripted “problem-hero-solution” mini-narrative. The result? Engagement of ~6.2% – at a time when Europe’s prime ministers struggle at 2% engagement.

What we can take away: Assign every channel a clear role, so that each of your messages is a deliberate amplification, not random noise.

2. Show or message? The boundary between authenticity and staging

Zelensky appears at the Grammys, at Cannes, at the Golden Globes. In the eyes of some critics, he turns war into theatre. In reality he is expanding the battlefield – money, weapons, and sanctions are born far from parliamentary sessions, behind Netflix screens and Twitter feeds. Pop-culture techniques do not trivialise the war but serve it to an audience that does not read strategic briefs, yet does scroll through a feed of short videos before falling asleep and puts digital pressure on its politicians through likes, shares, and comments.

Cole (2025) and Battista (2024) describe Zelensky’s communication as a two-layered mirror. The first layer is a raw reflection: a selfie filmed at four in the morning, dust on his face, the echo of sirens in the background – this gives the viewer the feeling that the president is really down in the cellar with his people. The second layer is staging: the distance of the camera is precisely chosen, the light lets the face be seen clearly, the sound does not start to hiss, the shade of the olive-green T-shirt matches the NATO camouflage palette. The combined effect of the two layers: sincerity + staging = a believable and shareable message. The authentic moment remains, yet it is amplified by professional production, and virality is born precisely from the contact between those two layers. If the genuineness were lost and the clip became too “beautiful,” the audience would begin to suspect a PR trick. If, on the contrary, all production techniques were abandoned, the message would drown in the noise of the information field and virality would vanish.

The paradox is that a wartime leader must keep the same precise rhythm in front of the camera as with a spending spreadsheet at headquarters. Too much rawness risks turning tragedy into “trauma porn” and numbing the onlooker; too much staging can turn genuine pain into a marketing effect and erode trust. That is why Zelensky’s team has chosen the principle of “as much sincerity as possible, as much staging as necessary.” A small “flaw” – a trembling hand, a momentary hiss of sound – is not a mistake but a marker of humanity. At the same time, the clip must be technically clean enough that aid funds, weapons packages, and media coverage do not get stuck behind a lack of quality. Authenticity brings a trust dividend – the audience feels that “he is with us in the trench.” Staging adds a propaganda premium – the message is clear, memorable, and easy to share. It is holding precisely this tension that allows a clip to carry both a personal vow and global diplomatic impact at once. Balance-sensitive staging does not conceal the truth but amplifies it, letting a single selfie video simultaneously raise morale on the front and compel allied parliaments to approve arms and funding packages.

What can we take away from this? Sincerity without structure is just noise, but structure without sincerity is pure advertising. Before pressing the record button, every crisis leader should ask: does the shot show where I am and what I feel, and does it sound clear enough to cut through the noisy news feed?

3. Likes into tanks

Baysha’s study (2023) shows how the “good vs. evil” framing strengthens the global audience’s moral backbone; Vysotskyi (2023) and Lukavečki (2024) add that a humanitarian story + a strategic narrative = international money, arms aid, and sanctions. All of this happened before the first diplomatic delegations even arrived. So: Like → share → pressure → votes in parliament → the aid desired

Of all the assets in Zelensky’s arsenal, digital visibility is the lightest, yet its range is surprisingly long. A clear conversion cascade emerges from the statistics. Let us start with the most micro-level impulse – the like. Every time #ArmUkraineNow gathers clicks, the volume of humanitarian donations rises by an average of 12%, confirms UNHCR’s social media analysis. The next stage is sharing: the spread of a post grows international media coverage at the same pace, which in turn increases public pressure on politicians. The end result – votes in parliaments – is reached with astonishing speed. A fine example is the impact of Zelensky’s landmark video address to the U.S. Congress in March 2022: in just two days, Americans’ support for the Ukraine aid package rose from 48% to 60%, forcing lawmakers to approve the arms and funding packages.

The narrative’s ability to break through cultural and language barriers became evident in 2024, when a video series with Spanish-language subtitles raised pro-Ukraine support in South America from 37% to 52% (Lukavečki, 2024). A single localised video clip lifted an entire continent’s support for Ukraine by 15 percentage points – a shift that often takes diplomats years to achieve, with success not guaranteed.

The same mathematics holds for his personal visibility. Even during the global pandemic, when the storm of information was immense, most Western leaders did not use their channels anywhere near as systematically as Zelensky does. Analyses conducted during the COVID crisis found that only about a tenth of European prime ministers’ posts were original content they had created themselves – the rest were copies of press releases or shared links. With Zelensky the picture is the reverse: more than 70% of his Instagram feed is entirely new material that he or his staff team has filmed and edited straight from the front. The result is nearly a threefold difference in engagement (6.25 vs. 2.42). Trust rose because people saw him acting constantly, and the sense of shared power deepened because the formats (selfie videos, Q&As, live broadcasts) made the interaction more immediate. As the reason, analysts point precisely to his consistent, direct, platform-based communication, which lets people feel that they “hear the leader directly, without a press secretary’s filter” (Zelensky Leadership Index). In other words, if a medal in war has two sides, then the other side is visibility, which carries the same tactical weight as a column of armoured vehicles. The story begins with a like, but at its end weapons roll across the border and billions in aid depart from finance committees – and the whole chain is measurable from a fingertip on a screen.

Does war need a show?

Without wishing to sound cynical: yes. As long as the world scrolls its news feed, the battle is also fought in the marketplace of attention. The question is not whether to use a show, but how to do it so that the staging serves the truth rather than concealing it. Zelensky’s filmed monologues are a reminder that the reality of war is still in the trenches, but its moral weapon is in front of the lens. When the camera falls silent, support often falls silent too. Visibility is the military equipment of today.

Why does it work?

Zelensky has built a model of visibility unprecedented in the age of war – he does not hide in a bomb shelter but turns it into a studio. In this “living on air,” spoken and visual, lie three forces:

1. The effect of raw authenticity. Dim light and a shaky camera give the sense that we are sitting with him in the same cellar. Quickly filmed, technically raw, but emotionally sharp clips create the illusion of an unfiltered reality. People – and algorithms – like this unfiltered closeness. It is exactly what audiences expect on platforms where presence is the currency of value.

2. Hijacking the narrative. The abstract “Ukraine” becomes a human face – with humour, fear, courage, and fatigue. The president becomes the hero of a story that is easy to share and hard to ignore.

3. Amplification of trust. Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer shows that business, government, and media are in a deep crisis of trust, yet people hunger for a firm, clear voice. A leader who “is present” builds trust even against a backdrop of economic pessimism. Zelensky shows that a crisis leader no longer chooses whether to be public – they choose how to be public.

Does visibility help win a war?

Can visibility really turn the course of a war? Only time will tell, but Ukraine’s experience already shows that constant presence in the picture has kept Ukraine in international focus longer than any other recent war. Every time Volodymyr Zelensky appears on the screens of the U.S. Congress or the German Bundestag, a new arms or aid package almost automatically follows – the camera turns sympathy straight into ammunition. The same mechanism works at the donor level: after the president’s especially resonant appeals, the GoFundMe statistics jump the very next day.

Yet visibility does not only mobilise money and weapons – it also holds focus. Russia plays on international fatigue, but Zelensky steps onto the stages of the Grammys, of Cannes, and of other pop-culture events – a cheap but effective way to bring the Ukraine issue into the spotlight, where the political risk of approving arms aid is far smaller. It is precisely the daily video “reminders” that keep the war on the front pages longer than the Western news cycle would on average tolerate. Without them, the conflict would have slipped off the agenda long ago.

Visibility also has a psychological dimension. A leader who shows himself in the frame reassures his people and allies that the country has not surrendered, that the country fights every day, every hour, every second. Zelensky has built platforms that compel the world to listen to him in particular – Telegram outpaces the press for speed, Instagram tells the emotional side of the story, Twitter threads press decision-makers for a reaction. The narrative is centralised: the day’s first headlines are framed by Kyiv, not the Kremlin.

The risk, however, remains, because too rigid a choreography can indeed erode trust. Edelman’s 2025 report reminds us that 70% of people suspect leaders of exaggeration or lies. So far Zelensky has held the line of the so-called “raw staging”: the light and the editing are enough to cut through the noise level, but the shot leaves in the trembling hand and the eyes dulled by sleeplessness – exactly the rough edges that prove this is real.

In a moment of crisis, what counts is the army of followers – a community that believes your voice before the fact-check even arrives. If you do not have it, your enemy tells your story. Zelensky understood this very early and set the bar so high that every future crisis leader must ask: do I have the courage to go on air without a mask, and the skill to do it every time so aptly that the world would listen? Because the war show may seem cynical, until you realise that the alternative is silence – and silence hands victory to the one who must not be allowed to win.

4 lessons for other leaders

1. Plan in peacetime in order to lead in crisis. Visibility does not arise by chance – tone, format, and channels must be designed in advance during peacetime, not improvised in a hurry at the moment of crisis.

2. The leader must be in front of the camera personally. A team can write the text, but only the leader’s own face and voice give credibility. The stage belongs to the leader – both offline and online.

3. Speak of values, not just events. The description of a missile strike resonates for a moment; the story of defending democracy resonates for a long time. The message must outlive the news cycle.

4. Your audience is your insurance. A leader who has a loyal following has, in a crisis, a direct channel – and the chance to define and tell their own story before competitors or trolls do.

Article originally written for Edasi.org.

In the column “The Many Faces of Visibility”, personal branding expert Olesija Saue explores the importance of visibility in leadership through the examples of internationally known figures. The series examines leaders from around the world, looking at their different visibility strategies, ethics, vulnerability, and forms of influence.