“The President is Here”. Legitimation Strategies in the Discourse of President Zelenskyy after 24 February 2022

In February 2022, as the president of Ukraine, the relative political novice Volodymir Zelenskyy had to face a full-scale war. In such a hard time he had to look not only for the citizens’ support, but foremost legitimize the actions of the authorities. This paper presents an analysis of the addresses to the citizens of Ukraine released by the president in two periods: the first month after the Russian attack and a year later, in February 2023. Two corpora have been built from scratch and analysed with corpus linguistics tools (Lancsbox# software). The results have been scrutinized with the use of van Leeuwen’s categorisation of legitimation strategies. The analysis reveals both continuities and shifts in Zelenskyy’s discourse over time. Similarities and dissimilarities between the collection periods have been observed. In both, Zelenskyy’s discourse relies on his charisma as a president and a leader (Personal Authority and Role Model Authority), while in 2023 he frequently references to international law (Abstraction). Zelenskyy also makes moral evaluations of the enemy and emphasizes the superiority of Ukrainians creating a sense of community. The conclusions of the analysis indicate the effectiveness of Zelenskyy’s legitimation strategies, since the majority of the public supports his decisions and trusts him.