Trump and Zelensky have more in common than you think

Many congressional Republicans who voted against aid to Ukraine would give anything to bask in the effusive praise and genuine affection Trump showered on Zelensky.

But Zelensky backing him during his impeachment is not the only reason Trump should like Zelensky. The two men have much more in common. Indeed, Zelensky is in many ways a Ukrainian Trump.

Like Trump, Zelensky is a political outsider, a TV star who built a multimillion-dollar media empire before becoming president of his country. Both men got huge ratings with successful television series — Trump with “The Apprentice” and Zelensky with “Servant of the People.” As entertainers, both men liked to make fun of themselves: Trump regularly appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and made jokes about his hair and his taste in decor, while Zelensky appeared on Russian television playing piano with his … well, watch for yourself.

Like Trump, Zelensky gave up a lucrative career to serve his country. Trump said at a rally last week, “I could right now be having a beautiful life. I could be at a gorgeous beach someplace.” The same is true for Zelensky. While Forbes reports that, contrary to Russian propaganda, he is not a billionaire and owns no yachts, he is worth about $20 million — all of it earned legitimately through his 25 percent stake in Kvartal 95, the company that produced his television programs.

Like Trump, Zelensky took aim at the “deep state.” He decided to enter politics because he came to believe that the political class in Ukraine was hopelessly corrupt — and that only an outsider could root out corruption and make his country great again. He was elected on a promise to pursue the “de-oligarchization” of the country and became the first noncorrupt president of Ukraine since independence. On taking office, Zelensky stripped lawmakers of immunity from prosecution, replaced corrupt officials and signed legislation curtailing the power of oligarchs. He was in the midst of this fight when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Like Trump, Zelensky has inflicted unprecedented punishment on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump proudly told me in a 2020 interview that “nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have” — and cited his decisions to block the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and arm Ukraine with Javelin missiles, among other actions, as proof. Well, Zelensky not only used those Javelin missiles to reverse Putin’s assault on Kyiv; under his leadership, Ukraine has wiped out nearly one-third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, destroyed more than 8,000 Russian tanks (about 70 percent of Russia’s operational fleet), and killed more than 620,000 Russian invasion troops. It also reportedly destroyed the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline in a covert operation — a move Trump would undoubtedly applaud.

Indeed, Trump and Zelensky are the only two presidents since World War II who have launched military strikes inside Russia. (In 2018, Trump launched a cyberattack against Russia’s Internet Research Agency, an act of war.)

Like Trump, Zelensky understands leverage. Two years after Putin invaded his country, Zelensky turned the tables on Moscow and invaded Russia — seizing nearly 500 square miles of Russia’s Kursk region. Zelensky’s decision to launch a counterattack was a bold military move that forced Russia to redeploy forces from Ukraine to counter it. But it was also a smart negotiating tactic. As Trump put it in “The Art of the Deal,” “The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, can’t do without.” Zelensky now holds something Putin can’t do without: Russian territory. If Trump wins the presidency and seeks to forge a peace accord, he can use that leverage at the negotiating table to regain Ukrainian territory Russia unlawfully seized.

Trump is holding his cards close to his vest on Ukraine, because he understands leverage, too. But those who expect Trump to side with Putin against Zelensky might be in for a surprise. In his debate with President Joe Biden, Trump said that Putin’s demands to keep all Ukrainian territory he has already seized and to force Ukraine to abandon its bid to join NATO are “not acceptable.” And in an interview with me at Mar-a-Lago last month, Trump repeated his warning that if Putin does not agree to a peace deal, he’ll give Ukraine more military aid than it has ever gotten before.

Standing with Zelensky, Trump said, “We both want to see this [war] end, and we both want to see a fair deal made.” If Trump can help Zelensky secure a just and lasting peace, then Zelensky can finally get back to the job he was elected to do: confronting the Ukrainian “deep state” and making Ukraine great again.