“The Zelenksy Effect” sets out to explain two PoliSci & IR puzzles: 1) Why all-out war now? Why did the Kremlin/Putin decide to unleash all-out war against Ukraine in 2022, when there were no new geopolitical triggers? 2) And what explains civilian war engagement? Why do we observe such high rates of civilian engagement in the war effort (80% across the whole country) and specifically in the southeast of Ukraine—where few expected citizens to defend or even be attached to their state, when it seemed that locals were more likely to hold pro-Russian foreign policy views and geopolitical dispositions?

Based on 8 years of research, and completed just as Russia launched its all-out war against Ukraine, «The Zelensky Effect» demonstrates how and why the decades-long development of Ukrainian civic identity, democratic civic duty, and shifts in foreign policy preferences increasingly became THE key geopolitical threat to Putin’s Russia. A threat made even more profound after 2019, when it was embodied and emboldened by a «new» kind of Ukrainian political leader – a Jewish russophone from eastern Ukraine. At the same time, these developments were also at the heart of the Kremlin’s miscalculation of how the theatre of war would unfold. Thus, this is a book that is as much about the story of the rise of a civic Ukrainian national identity that made the man as it is about the empirical details of how he helped influence key constituencies in the russophone southeast of the country. It demonstrates how and why Ukraine’s democratic consolidation became and now continues to be a major geopolitical obstacle to Russian aims of regional hegemony and international influence. The last chapter of the book cautiously considers (and warns) how and why Ukraine’s high rate of civilian engagement and ability to maintain its democratic resilience will be central to ensuring both Ukrainian and Euro-Atlantic security.