You're listening to Rough Translation from NPR.

So watching the news out of Ukraine this week,

which I've been obsessively doing, I know that many of you are as well.

It's a fast-moving, terrible story that our NPR colleagues are covering on the ground.

I'll just say that as someone who has lived in Ukraine and covered it as a reporter,

and as someone who's just interested in what happens there on a normal day,

I would never, in a million years, have imagined that people around the world

would be quoting a president of Ukraine,

you know, sharing his one-liners.

And it's a performance that has captured world attention,

mobilized international support, and maybe whatever happens next in this war

will permanently change how people see this act of Russian aggression.

So it got me thinking about Zelensky's past as a performer in a very different sense.

Is former career as an improv, comedian, and actor?

Stop! Stop!

He was a legend on the competitive comedy circuit.

And though it might not seem that all the time to talk about Zelensky the stand-up comic

when he's standing up for his life and his country,

I'd say that to understand one, it really helps to understand the other.

So recently I rewatched the sitcom without which there would be no president Zelensky.

This is the theme song.

It's called Servant of the People, Sluge Naroto, from 2015.

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