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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Time Magazine this morning announced its Person of the Year for 2022, by the way, its Athlete of the Year yesterday was Aaron Judge, and the person of the year, according to Time Magazine, is Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Time also named the spirit of Ukraine. Time's Person of the Year designation started almost a century ago now, to give you a little bit of background, 1927, with Charles Lindbergh in year one, Walter Chrysler in year two, Gandhi in 1930, and FDR three times in those early years, then it was man of the year, even though a few women were named.

Eventually it got officially ungendered, but remember the designation is not like the Nobel Peace Prize, not best person of the year. Hitler was named man of the year in 1938, Stalin two times as well. More recently, just to bring you up on the last few, Greta Thunberg, Person of the Year in 2019, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris together in 2020, and last year, Elon Musk. He was on the shortlist again this year, but Time named Zelensky.

With us now, with a few thoughts, is Time Magazine correspondent Simon Shuster, no and, just Simon Shuster, who has been with Time since 2013. His bio page says his family immigrated from their home in Moscow to the United States in 1989, and he's been covering the conflict in Ukraine in the context of his ongoing reporting on tensions between Russia and the West. Simon, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC. Do we have Simon Shuster?

Simon Shuster: Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, there you go. Okay. Sorry about that.

Simon Shuster: Sorry about that. Thank you so much. I'm really glad to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Why did Time name Volodymyr Zelensky Person of the Year, or is that question even too obvious to ask?

Simon Shuster: It kind of is this year. As the editor-in-chief points out in his essay on the choice, this was one of the years when it was pretty clear, with just the amount of coverage, the role he's played in the war, a really era defining conflict in Europe. We've seen so much of him. We've experienced this war in many ways through his leadership, through his social media channels, through his speeches with the way he's really dominated perceptions and narratives around the war and how Ukraine is fighting, and in many cases, winning it. It did seem like a pretty clear choice. I was pushing for it and I'm glad my editorial colleagues agreed.

Brian Lehrer: Time's editor wrote, "Whether the battle for Ukraine fills one with hope or with fear, Volodymyr Zelensky galvanized the world in a way we haven't seen in decades." Does that speak to the criteria for Time's Person of the Year, not virtue, one way or another, though obviously virtuous in this case, but how influential the person was?

Simon Shuster: I think so. Time Person of Year is not an honor or an award. It's a recognition of influence, so for better or worse. I think President Zelensky when I talked to him for this story, he's also very, you could say, modest or hesitant to accept plaudits. In the context of comparisons that have been made of him to Winston Churchill, he said, "It's too early for that kind of stuff. We're not done yet. You don't know how this is going to go. I'm early in my career. I still got many years to be in public life and in politics, hopefully."

He's quite modest in that sense, but I think the recognition here is that his influence has been really dramatic in stirring the world to help Ukraine and inspiring people to pay attention to this conflict and to do what they can to push back against Russian aggression, not only inside Ukraine, but really around the world.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any reaction to Time naming Volodymyr Zelensky as the Person of the Year, any Ukrainians, Ukrainian Americans listening right now or anyone else, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Simon, I was thinking last night really, because we did a little very informal small group prediction set on my team of who from the shortlist was going to win. One of my colleagues said the US Supreme Court would be named the Person of the Year, because they as a group were on the shortlist and we know some of the things they did this year, but most of us thought Zelensky.

We were already having this conversation yesterday, and I was thinking, Time Person of the Year, and not to take anything away from Time Magazine as a news organization, but Zelensky could see this as the most trivial thing in the world when the Russians want him dead. He's been standing against an existential invasion of his country, suffering countless casualties of his people, a mass tragedy on any human scale, mass war crime, all to just defend the existence of their homeland. You said you interviewed him and revealed to him the selection. I was wondering if he would even notice rather than like, "Oh, okay. Some US news organization did something." How did he react?

Simon Shuster: Well, no. He said it was very strange, that he was surprised by it and honored and humbled, and had a similar response as I mentioned before of saying that it's a bit early to judge me because my work isn't done. I think the way that he sees his role in the war would help explain why something like this is important to him, and certainly his team. He sees himself as a communicator more than a battlefield leader. He lets the generals do the fighting on the front line for the most part.

He stays very much abreast of their decisions and gives them broad instructions, but for the most part, ever since I started covering the invasion from the first days, his focus and the focus of his team have been about communications. They've been about how do we keep the attention of the world focused on this war and on helping Ukraine and on Ukraine's need to win this war and survive this. I think a recognition like this one, many others that he's gotten, really is a testament and a sign to him that that dimension of the war-- that they're winning, that they're winning the war for hearts and minds.

Brian Lehrer: Because it's major media, it's useful to that effort, I hear you saying. What about the spirit of Ukraine as the co-designee as Person of the Year, can you put that into words?

Simon Shuster: Yes. I think that we tried to get at the many millions of ordinary people both in Ukraine and outside who were, to some extent, inspired by Zelensky or just felt compelled to stand up and help, to do whatever they could. In Ukraine, it could be filing sandbags or stitching camouflage, netting for the dugouts and trenches with the soldiers. In Europe or the United States or other countries, it could be giving humanitarian aid, volunteering, supporting, calling their elected representatives and urging them to grant more support to Ukraine.

All these many millions of small acts of support, I think added up to what we saw this year, which was a global shift in the way people viewed, in many ways, their responsibility to stop imperial aggression, which is what Russia is doing now in Ukraine, and to act in alignment with the values that we in the West adhere to or at least profess, supporting sovereignty, supporting democracy, supporting freedom. I think all those many millions of acts of courage, selflessness, sacrifice, those are the things that we tried to get at.

The idea of the spirit of Ukraine, it's the spirit that really inspired and moved people all around the world. It was very difficult to choose avatars or stand-ins for who would represent that. I thankfully was not really involved in those choices. I was focused on other parts of the package, but I think we did a fairly good job of focusing on the people who were really-- you wouldn't have expected them to stand up and do what they did.

Brian Lehrer: Jerome in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jerome.

Jerome: Hi. Morning. I found it interesting. I was watching Morning Joe this morning, and I forget who the representative from Time Magazine was, I think it's the person who headed this endeavor for choosing the person of the year. Anyhow, he said that when Zelensky was asked to compare himself to Churchill, Zelensky actually said Charlie Chaplin would be more appropriate. I wonder [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You want to hear more about that. Jerome, thank you very much. Was that you on Morning Joe, Simon, or was that you who asked that question of Zelensky and got that response, or what can you say about his comparison of himself to Charlie Chaplin?

Simon Shuster: That's right. That was from the interview that I did with President Zelensky while we were on the train heading to the city of Kherson, which had just been liberated from the Russians two days earlier. We were there on the train going to see the people celebrating their liberation on the main square in Kherson. Much of the story describes that. One of the things we talked about, it was a very far-reaching interview, one of the things we talked about was historical comparisons, how he sees his place in history, and Charlie Chaplin came up. He mentioned how he had compared himself in some ways to Charlie Chaplin before. He, of course, in his previous life, was a comedian and actor.

I think what he meant by that, he made this quite explicit in the interview, was that Charlie Chaplin, he lampooned Hitler in the middle of the Holocaust. His comedy was making fun of Hitler in 1940, 1941, and during World War II. He, Zelensky, saw that as a great testament to the ability of artists, comedians, comic actors to use the power of satire to do good in the world, to combat fascism, to tear dictators down and cut them down to size. I think that's what he would like to see himself as doing in some ways, and the comparison that he finds more apt [unintelligible 00:12:18] than Winston Churchill. It was interesting to me that in terms of Churchill, again, he wasn't such an obvious fan.

He's read quite a bit about Churchill's biography, and Churchill's ideology, at least, was quite imperialist, certainly, before World War II when he was in politics, and Zelensky didn't appreciate that. He did not want himself to be associated as much certainly with that side of Churchill's character and ideology.

Brian Lehrer: We're talking about Volodymyr Zelensky being named Time Magazine's Person of the Year this morning with Simon Schuster, Time correspondent who's been covering the war in Ukraine, is an immigrant from the old Soviet Union himself, and also covers Russia and its conflicts with the West in an ongoing basis. Simon, Time's editor Edward Felsenthal wrote in the piece that named Zelensky, for proving that courage can be as contagious as fear, for stirring people and nations to come together in defense of freedom, for reminding the world of the fragility of democracy and of peace, Volodymyr Zelensky and the spirit of Ukraine are Time's 2022 Person of the Year.

Is this mattering? You're probably an especially good person to ask because you've covered that region for a long time and you're from that region originally. Do you think that it is mattering to slowing the erosion of democracy in the region or in the world?

Simon Shuster: Yes, I think it really is having a major effect in Europe. If you remember a few years ago, some of the conversations we were having about European democracies being in decline, Poland, Hungary, come to mind. In the case of Hungary, I think Russia was very much involved in influencing and partnering with anti-democratic forces inside Hungary. I think there was a rollback in democratic values and infatuation, a growing infatuation with authoritarianism that Russia and Vladimir Putin personally rather embodied. I remember covering this a few years ago, this general trend and its many manifestations around Europe. I think that conversation has stopped.

Now I think the cause of defending Ukraine and the horror that people feel when they see what Russia is doing in Ukraine, I think these things have really rolled back the historical clock on that set of trends and tendencies that we were seeing in Europe before this invasion started. I do think that Zelensky does get some of the credit, at least for doing that because he's just enunciated and given voice to those values so clearly and consistently in his very frequent speeches and appearances and social media posts and so on.

Brian Lehrer: Have you been surprised as someone who covers the region and is covering the war at the Ukrainian people's determination to fight for every inch of their land? Many observers think an early appeasement of Russia, if I can call it appeasement, or compromise, letting them have the Eastern region with many ethnic Russian citizens and some sympathy for Russia or for independence among their population, let it go and save all this bloodshed everywhere else. Has their choice in how united they seem in fighting for every inch of their soil at such immense losses of life surprised you?

Simon Shuster: No. What surprised me is Vladimir Putin's decision to invade. I thought that would never happen. I was in many ways in solidarity with President Zelensky before the invasion started there, because he also didn't believe that Putin would do it. It seemed suicidal and idiotic for Putin to take that step in large part because it was very clear to me, and I think it was pretty clear to President Zelensky, that the Ukrainians would fight back tooth and nail, that they would not bow down to some imperialist conquest or some puppet government that Russia would try to install in Kyiv. This seemed to me, having studied the country and the war from its earliest days in 2014, impossible.

There's no way that the Ukrainian would allow this to happen. I think that did not surprise me. The fact that Putin's intelligence services or whatever led him to make this decision that they were so wrong about Ukrainian morale, the preparedness of the Ukrainian armed forces, that was a big surprise, that the Russian intelligence services were so off in their assessments of what this invasion would look like. I think we've seen that play out most recently in the city of Kherson, where the Russians retreated with their tails between their legs. Most of the story in this package is about that city and its liberation and going down there to see [inaudible 00:17:53]

Brian Lehrer: Last question. Ukraine may be holding Russia off, but civilian areas, as you know, keep getting shelled in what amounts to large scale war crimes, in so many people's opinions. Where does the war have to go? How does this end?

Simon Shuster: It's a hard one, and I don't know. I think President Zelensky's position is that we need to liberate all of our territory before we talk about any kind of negotiations with the Russians. I think the momentum [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That means we have to win the war before we talk about ending the war. That's as high a bar as you could set.

Simon Shuster: That's right. I think the momentum that the Ukrainians have recently on the battlefield, certainly since the beginning of September, has put them in this mood or position where they're like, "Things are going our way. Let's see how far we can push this before we talk about any kind of negotiations." Also, that's very much the mood in the military, even more so, I think, than in the political leadership. From my conversations with military leaders, it's very clear that they're very angry and they want revenge and they want to push back right up to the Russian border.

In my conversation with President Zelensky, we talked in part about, okay, if you do that, let's say Ukraine gets back control of these Eastern territories or Crimea, for example, which Russia has occupied for the last eight years. Russia took control of those regions in 2014 at the beginning of the war. Those regions have been living, as Zelensky described it, in information vacuum, in the Russian information propaganda space. Winning back the people there, you can potentially push back the Russian militaries such that they retreat, maybe, I don't know. Winning back the people, he sees as another dimension of the challenge of winning the war.

Making those people in those regions believe that Ukraine is their home, that Ukraine fundamentally is with them and supports them. That's another big challenge, and I think goes to the heart of your question in the sense that there are many dimensions of victory that would have to play out before I think we can call this war finished. [unintelligible 00:20:29] I don't know.

Brian Lehrer: Time Magazine's Person of the Year announced this morning, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the Spirit of Ukraine. Time Magazine's Simon Schuster, who's covering the war and covers that region, has joined us to explain. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time on this busy day.

Simon Shuster: Thank you. Thank you so much.

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