Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the importance of digital communication
2025-01-06 10:46:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
Volodymyr Zelenskyy talking with Lex Fridman via AI translation and live interpretors, on the importance of leaders being able to communicate with the people [49:05]:
We distributed weapons to people. That’s how it was. Trucks came and simply distributed weapons to people so that they could defend the capital. To ordinary people, just on the street. To ordinary people who understood that if the russians entered the city then we would have the same thing that is happening in other cities per the information we received.
Thanks to digitalisation, we had very good digitalisation before this. We preserved a lot and even when they were surrounding certain cities, a lot of things still worked. The banking system, the internet, we had television and thanks to this I made several decisions to ensure people are united and have all the information. Russia is very good at spreading large scale disinformation.
Fortunately I have 2 decades of experience managing a production studio, TV channels, and large media resources. I understood that we needed to build an information network very quickly. Thanks to this I began to address the people constantly. This happened 3-5 times a day. In fact I became that information source for people that were in cities, cut off from other information.
It was very important for me to keep all things digital. To keep the internet. To stay in touch with everyone. With all the people. Initially that’s the contact we had. We also built a media platform where we had all the news agencies of Ukraine and this network was called Marathon, and it was also very important for the people to trust us, and people had to receive information.
Why? There were waves of russian, on the first day, who said ‘he ran away’. I had to go out into the street, I left the office and went outside, because I was showing that this was no green screen. That it was the street not some digital manipulation. I did these things then I touched various objects. Now people might think that these are small things, but I was actually showing that I was in a real place. All of this had an impact.
Aside from the fascinating insight into the practical reality of war in a large city and how important daily communication is, I’m struck by the number of impossible things that have been overcome in order for this interview to even be possible.
And then for me to even be able to write about it publically. Even down to being able to copy and paste the most ridiculously difficult name to spell ever.
And even having the energy for my brain’s neurons to fire so I can string these words together into something that’s just about readable. It’s like every gosh darn thing in the universe is blocking this thing.
And all the other impossible things that I can see but don’t have the time or energy to write about here.
And all the other impossible things that I can’t even see that are no doubt here, there and everywhere.
Somehow life finds a way.
Our leaders need to be able to rapidly set up basic comms networks from their laptops or even phones.
Update: then life immediately finds a way to break it all! Literally. But I still managed to add this update! Take that life! :)
Update: Hey guess what, life tried to block everything again and again right after tge kadt update. But I still managed to make this update to the previous update! Ha haaa! #