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An updated thread on the wartime #leadership demonstrated by @ZelenskyyUa – with a focus on visiting troops in the field, particularly in the wake of the successful Kharkiv offensive. 1/10 🧵 
2/ His visits have many purposes. First, it allows @ZelenskyyUa to get a feel for the morale & capability of his military in the field. You can read reports, but there is no substitute for walking the ground with leaders & soldiers at the tip of the spear.
3/ Another reason for visits by @ZelenskyyUa is to engage with junior soldiers in the field, to inspire them, recognise their sacrifice and to reiterate the purpose of their sacrifices. Purpose is the most important thing a leader can provide.
4/ As Eisenhower writes in Crusade in Europe: “belief in an underlying cause is fully as important to success in war as any local espirit or discipline induced or produced by command or leadership action.”
5/ Another reason for these visits is for @ZelenskyyUa to show he has trust in his nation’s Army. He shows he is comfortable in placing his life in the hands of the Army - it is an important and strategic trust-building exercise between politicians & military leaders.
6/ His visits are also an important way that @ZelenskyyUa differentiates himself from Putin. It is unlikely that Putin will ever visit the poorly fed, terribly led, retreating Russian troops, proxies and draftees in #Ukraine.
7/ Finally, these visits draw attention from audiences beyond #Ukraine. In demonstrating that he is not a ‘bunker leader’, @ZelenskyyUa shows Western citizens he is the leader of a nation worth supporting ‘to the end’. This is important as inflation & energy costs rise.
8/ In his study of wartime leaders, @EliotaCohen notes that “in war to see things as they are, and not as one would like them to be, to persevere despite disappointments, to know of numerous opportunities lost and of perils still ahead, to lead knowing...”
9/ “…that one’s subordinates and colleagues are in some case inadequate, in others hostile, is a courage of a rarer kind that a willingness to expose oneself to the unlucky bullet or shell.” It is this type of courage and #leadership that Zelensky has delivered for his country.
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