Invoking Churchill: Zelenskyy’s use of myth diplomacy in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of myth diplomacy: the mobilisation of audience-held political myths in diplomatic communication to shape interpretation, ascribe significance, and prompt action. It shows how myth, as a mechanism of influence in public diplomacy, differs from memory diplomacy, analogy, and strategic narrative, and examines its use in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speeches to UK audiences following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Through discourse analysis of Zelenskyy’s speeches, an elite interview with a senior member of his speechwriting team, and analysis of UK media coverage, the article shows how Churchill and Second World War myths were repeatedly used to frame Ukraine’s struggle, shape British understandings of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and reinforce calls for support. In doing so, it clarifies the role of myth in diplomatic communication and offers a framework for identifying myth diplomacy in practice.

Introduction

Leaders regularly reference important, often-repeated, audience-held stories in their diplomatic communication abroad. In 2013, US President Barack Obama referenced the Berlin Wall in a speech in Germany (Obama, 2013) and in 2016, he referenced Greek epics in Athens (Obama, 2016). In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron referenced the American revolution in a speech to the US congress (Macron, 2018), in 2018 US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech in Jerusalem where he referenced ‘Abraham’s promised land’ alongside a collection of biblical stories (Pence, 2018), and in 2021 Pope Francis referenced Greek myths in Athens (Francis, 2021). This use of important and often-repeated audience-held stories as reference points in diplomatic communication has become particularly noticeable in more recent speeches delivered by President Zelenskyy following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

To name just a few examples, in the United States, Zelenskyy invoked Pearl Harbour and 9/11 to explain Ukrainian suffering, and Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech to call the United States to action to protect Ukraine (Zelenskyy, 2022b). In France, he spoke of ‘freedom, equality, brotherhood,’ using France’s motto, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, to connect Ukraine and France (Zelenskyy, 2022d). In Germany, he spoke about the Berlin Wall to explain the need for European unity against Russia (Zelenskyy, 2022a). In the United Kingdom, he has repeatedly talked about Churchill and the Second World War (WWII), usually in the context of resistance, bravery, and rising to the moment (Zelenskyy, 2022c, 2023).

The stories of Churchill and WWII, and their impact on British politics, have been well studied, and both are widely recognised as political myths (Fielding et al., 2020; Kelsey, 2013; Lammers, 2022:; Preston, 2014; Toye, 2008): semi-permanent narratives that shape how political groups interpret the world and how they act within it (Esch, 2010: 362; Schmitt, 2018: 488), understood as ‘the work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group (or society) . . . make significance of their experience and deeds’ (Bottici, 2007: 133). Fielding, Schwarz, and Toye capture this mythic quality in their account of Churchill as a resilient national persona that can be summoned when danger is perceived:

When the face of the people is perceived to be in danger, however highly strung these fears may be judged, Churchill is on hand to enter the frame. Those identified as the enemies shape-shift, but the persona of Churchill remains, it seems, impeccably resilient. Just when it looks as if he has served his time and all life within him is spent, back he comes, growling and thundering, the principal lead in the national melodrama. In popular iconography, he is reduced to his grow, to his V for-victory gesture, to his cigar, or to his hat. These signs, working as a code instantly decipherable to those in the know, are familiar features in the nation’s mental landscape. (Fielding et al., 2020: 2–3)

Zelenskyy’s references to the Churchill and WWII myths in his speeches to the United Kingdom, and the wider pattern of similar examples also noted, show that it is not unusual for diplomatic actors to use audience-held myths in their diplomatic communications. Despite this, the power of myth and its function as a mechanism of influence in diplomatic practice remain under-theorised in Diplomacy Studies. Existing approaches, such as strategic narratives, memory diplomacy, and historical analogy, have conceptual overlaps. Yet they do not account for the distinctive combined properties of political myths, those being their semi-permanence, their capacity to generate significance, and their function as determinations to act (Bottici, 2007). This article fills this gap by introducing the concept of myth diplomacy: the mobilisation of audience-held political myths in diplomatic communication to shape interpretation, ascribe significance, and invite action.

From this starting point, the article asks two research questions: (1) How can myths be used as a mechanism of influence in public diplomacy? (2) How were myths held by UK audiences mobilised in President Zelenskyy’s speeches to invite support for Ukraine?

The article proceeds in two steps. The first develops a conceptual framework for understanding myth as a mechanism of influence and specifies how myth diplomacy can be distinguished from adjacent concepts in International Relations (IR). It also outlines operational indicators for empirically identifying myth diplomacy. The second uses discourse analysis of Zelenskyy’s UK-facing speeches, an elite interview with a senior member of his speechwriting team, and British press coverage, to examine how Churchill and WWII myths were activated, received, and reproduced in the UK public sphere.

In doing so, the article makes three contributions: (1) it clarifies the role of myth in diplomatic communication and distinguishes it from existing explanatory lenses; (2) it provides an operational framework for recognising and analysing myth diplomacy in practice; (3) it demonstrates how audience-held myths shaped the UK reception of Ukraine’s wartime messaging.

Political myth

Before establishing how myth can be used as a mechanism of influence in diplomacy, it is first worth defining what it is. Defining myth has been complicated by disciplinary fragmentation across Politics, History, Literary Studies, and Philosophy, resulting in conceptual ambiguity and inconsistent usage (Flood, 2002: 3). As a result of this lack of clarity, research has often treated it objectively as an incorrect or misleading narrative (Braumoeller, 2010; Rudolf, 2005; Schenoni et al., 2022), without deeper conceptual development. By contrast, developments in the debate over political myth as a concept within the political philosophy literature have sought to bring myth clearer conceptual clarity (Bottici, 2007; Bottici and Challand, 2006; Flood, 2002), and as a result, has inspired a raft of more recent research on the impacts of political myth across different dimensions of Politics and IR (Eason, 2023; Esch, 2010; Pike and Diamond, 2021; Schmitt, 2018; Turner, 2022).

Within the conceptual literature on political myth, there is consensus that myths take narrative form. They are ‘narratives of events cast in a dramatic form’ (Tudor, 1972: 137) or, as Boer puts it, ‘important stories’ (Boer, 2009: 9). However, one thing that differentiates myth from narrative more generally is that it draws on pre-existing, collectively recognised interpretive patterns. Flood’s definition captures this well: political myths ‘can be said to exist when accounts of a more or less common sequence of events, involving more or less the same principal actors, subject to more or less the same overall interpretation and implied means, circulate within a social group’ (Flood, 2002: 42). Through this circulation, myths provide familiar narrative structures through which events are interpreted and made sense of; invoking a myth means invoking a ready-made storyline that audiences already understand.

Chiara Bottici is a leading scholar on this, providing a clear conceptualisation of myth and its impact that inspired the raft of more recent policy-oriented work noted above. For Bottici, the key to political myth lies not simply in how it structures the world to make sense of it, but in how it provides significance. She argues that humans inhabit a chaotic and indifferent world, and myth offers significance as a way of resisting this indifference (Bottici and Challand, 2006: 317-320; Bottici, 2007: 125). Significance occupies a space between the ‘simple meaning’ that accompanies all linguistic communication and the deeper existential meaning often associated with religion. Myths provide this significance by inserting events into a broader narrative context – ‘inserting the world in a narrative of events’ – and thereby grounding them (Bottici and Challand, 2006: 319) and by having a ‘proximization’ effect that makes distant or abstract events feel close and personally relevant (Esch, 2010: 362).

Because significance is subjective, what counts as a political myth for one community may not be for another. This is why Bottici and Challand define political myth not as a fixed object but as ‘the work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group can provide significance to their political conditions and experience’, produced and sustained through a continuous system of production, reception, and reproduction (Bottici and Challand, 2006: 318–320). Myth is therefore a process in which narratives are updated and reinterpreted to meet the significance needs of a group.

Alongside making sense and significance, political myths have a practical dimension. Bottici and Challand describe them as ‘mapping devices through which we look at the world, feel about it and therefore also act within it as a social group’ (Bottici and Challand, 2006: 312). By reducing complexity and providing familiar plots and characters, myths offer cognitive and affective templates that shape not only how events are understood but how people respond to them. For this reason, the authors characterise political myths as ‘determinations to act’, images and stories that carry embedded behavioural cues and continually reinforce the dispositions and actions they suggest (Bottici and Challand, 2006: 316, 321). Their policy relevance, therefore, in part comes from their ability to shape action. As Heuser and Buffet (1998: 273–274) argue in their earlier work on myth, political decisions may respond not to the situation itself but to ‘the myth which is projected onto reality’. In this sense, political actors and publics often interpret and act upon events through mythic frames, with myths supplying the cognitive and affective architecture for judgement and action.

Myth and Diplomacy Studies

Having established what is meant by political myth and the criteria for identifying it, the next step is to locate this concept within existing scholarship on diplomacy and diplomatic communication. Diplomatic communication often involves invoking stories that can be recognised as audience-held political myths (e.g. Francis, 2021; Macron, 2018; Obama, 2013, 2016; Pence, 2018; Zelenskyy, 2022b, 2022c, 2023). While ‘political myth’ has provided a useful platform for recent research in Politics and IR to better understand the real-world impact of myths on decision-making and wider society, the use of audience-held political myths as a mechanism of diplomatic influence has not been analysed on its own terms in Diplomacy Studies.

Research shows that political myth shapes how strategic narratives are received and their impact within political discourse (Schmitt, 2018), influences how leadership projects are interpreted and endure by animating meanings attached to political leadership (Pike and Diamond, 2021), and shapes the framing and legitimation of the US ‘war on terror’ rhetoric (Esch, 2010). Within foreign policy analysis, Turner (2022) examines how the frontier myth continues to frame interpretations of US policy and identity, while Eason (2023) shows how the Blair Poodle myth has shaped constructions of the US–UK ‘special relationship’ in elite and public discourse. Yet the role of myth as a mechanism of influence in diplomacy has received little direct attention.

Narratives

As noted earlier, myths come in narrative form, and Diplomacy studies, and IR more broadly, have developed a substantial literature on narratives and diplomacy, which can be differentiated from the concept of myth. Strategic narratives are cohesive storylines crafted to shape interpretation, frame issues, and legitimise courses of action in line with broader strategic objectives (Miskimmon et al., 2017). Such narratives can build support for a cause and delegitimise opponents in battles over ideas (Freedman, 2013: 431–432). Narratives provide simple meaning by plotting events, often with a beginning, middle, and end, and/or setting, characters, and a plot. They may be told to persuade and influence, as in the case of strategic narratives (Freedman, 2013; Miskimmon et al., 2017; Oppermann and Spencer, 2016, 2018; Szostek, 2017), and their mechanism of persuasion derives from the ability of the narrative and the narrator to tell a cohesive story that makes persuasive sense of events.

As narratives, myths also make sense, and therefore, like narratives, actors may use them to persuade and influence. However, myths possess additional influential properties. As Bottici (2007) argues, myths make significance, are told and retold in a process of ‘work on myth’, and function as determinations to act. As noted by Eason:

Narratives carry social and political power. They construct the way people understand the world and can be used to manipulate political landscapes. Some narratives, however, matter more than others. Some narratives help people understand the world and the origin of things better than others. Some narratives get reproduced for longer. Some narratives are instantly recognisable in the condensed form of symbols. Some narratives have more significance than others for the social group that tells, interprets, and retells them. It is across these dimensions where the concept of myth, as distinct from narrative, becomes apparent. (Eason, 2023: 4)

Accordingly, myth can be distinguished from narrative (and strategic narrative) in that, while myths take narrative form, they possess an additional combination of features that go beyond narrative alone. Those being the ability to make sense and significance, and role as determinations to act, produced and reproduced in a process of work on myth. Examining the use of myth in diplomatic communication through the lens of narrative may illuminate valuable findings on how such narratives made sense for the audience; however, it misses the other important dimensions of myth that give them power.

Memory diplomacy

In addition to narrative, another relevant concept that overlaps with myth and has been analysed in Diplomacy Studies is memory diplomacy. As concepts, memory and myth overlap, but as with myth and narrative, they are distinct. Memory diplomacy uses remembered pasts to engage foreign publics. In its cooperative mode, states draw on shared or mutually recognised histories (e.g. commemorations, anniversaries, museums, apologies, joint initiatives) to legitimise positions, support understanding, and repair ties; here, soft power works through collective identity, making shared pasts communicable resources (Bachleitner, 2018; Feklyunina, 2016). In its more contested form, ‘memory wars’, actors mobilise the past to rebut rivals, claim status, or seek recognition as part of external communication (Edwards, 2022). Memory can also travel and become institutionalised: via norm transfer and appropriation (Subotić, 2019), through securitisation as ‘mnemonic security’ (Mälksoo, 2015), and in support of ontological security in bilateral relations (Gustafsson, 2013).

Myth and memory diplomacy can be differentiated by examining their underlying mechanisms. Political myths are reproduced through ‘work on myth’, answer a need for significance, and function as determinations to act; crucially, they do not depend on historical accuracy, or on history at all (Bottici, 2007; Bottici and Challand, 2006). Memory appeals pivot on claims about the past and the recognition they seek; myth appeals pivot on audience-held, naturalised schemas that ascribe significance to events by bringing them closer to the audience, and function as determinations to act. Overlap is possible. Shared memories can be narrated through mythic frames, and myths can be historicised, but while all memories require historical grounding, not all myths do. For example, The American Dream or Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité are more ideational than historical. Regardless though, when a remembered episode is produced in a process of production and reproduction, answers a need for significance, functions as a determination to act, and is condensable and recognisable in symbolic form, it is more than memory, it is also myth. Analysing such phenomena solely through the lens of memory overlooks myth’s semi-permanence and action-guiding properties.

Analogy

A related lens is historical analogy. Analogies help actors diagnose situations, weigh options, and justify policies by mapping the present onto a defined moment in the past and its ‘lessons’ (Khong, 1992; Neustadt and May, 1986). They compress complexity into familiar heuristics, for example, ‘another Munich’, but depend on an explicit past–present comparison and on the perceived aptness of the source case. They are often part of an uneven, imperfect process of ‘lesson learning’ within government (Kettle, 2018) and are commonly used more as a persuasive resource in political argument (Mumford, 2015).

As with memory, analogy and myth can overlap. Analogies can draw upon myths, such as Churchill and WWII in the United Kingdom. However, when an analogy is reproduced over time, answers a need for significance, functions as a determination to act, and becomes condensable and recognisable in symbolic form, it operates not merely as an analogy but also as a myth. Analysing such a phenomenon solely through the lens of analogy fails to capture myth’s semi-permanence, significance-making, and function as a determination to act.

Ultimately, many diplomatic acts may be legible through the different lenses of myth, memory, strategic narrative, and analogy. The claim advanced here is that specifying the mythic mechanism adds explanatory bite. Treating myth merely as memory, narrative, or analogy obscures important combined qualities of myth that can influence how people see the world and act within it. For scholarship that specifically examines how states can and do seek to influence each other, this is analytically limiting.

Myth diplomacy

Myth diplomacy refers to the mobilisation of audience-held political myths in diplomatic communication to shape how foreign publics interpret events, experience their importance, and orient action. It involves invoking and repurposing pre-existing, semi-permanent narratives to convey a selected message. Illustratively, when Obama (2016) referred to Greek epics while speaking in Greece, and Pence (2018) referred to Biblical stories involving the Israelites while speaking in Jerusalem, they were acting as representatives of their states to foreign audiences and invoking myth narratives that were already intelligible and meaningful in those settings, reproduced to convey a particular message.

Given the practical functions of political myth (sense-making, significance-making, and functioning as a determination to act, produced through a work on myth process), it is possible to theorise how myths can operate as mechanisms of influence in diplomatic communication. Where a myth is recognisable within the target public culture, a diplomatic actor could hypothetically tell (or reproduce) it to convey a message and trigger all three functions of political myth in support of their diplomatic aims. They could use it to structure interpretation through an intelligible storyline. They could generate significance by using the narrative to bring events closer to the audience and imbue them with affective weight. And finally, they could use the determination to act the role of myth as a call to action.

This is where ‘myth diplomacy’ as a label offers analytical value. Strategic narrative, memory diplomacy, and analogy each illuminate important aspects of diplomatic communication, but only ‘myth diplomacy’ centres on the activation of audience-held narratives, produced in a process of production, reception, reproduction, to organise interpretation, generate significance, and call to action. Myth is its own distinct concept with its own distinctive mechanisms for shaping how audiences see the world and act within. Therefore, there is value in centring this in the analysis of diplomatic communication that uses audience-held myths.

To analyse myth diplomacy empirically, both in this research and future research, the concept must be specified in observable terms. Based on the discussion so far, it can be said that myth diplomacy is present when four conditions are met. First, the external actor’s message must contain a recognisable political myth: a semi-permanent narrative that makes sense, significance, and is told as a determination to act. To put it plainly, myth diplomacy requires myth. Second, the myth must be owned by the audience, meaning it resonates within their cultural repertoire rather than the sender’s, predating the sender’s narration. If the myth is owned by the sender, and not the audience, it would not have the same effect as myth. It would simply be a narrative, because it would not be culturally significant or resonant. Third, the actor must reproduce the mythic schema in a way that embeds its narrative within the diplomatic message they are seeking to convey, otherwise no message is being communicated. Fourth, there must be evidence of audience uptake, seen when media, commentators, or political figures draw on the same mythic frames, indicating reception and reproduction consistent with the work-on-myth cycle (Bottici and Challand, 2006). For clarity, these identifiers are visualised in Table 1.

Table 1.

Myth diplomacy identifiers.

Identifier	Identifying question
Myth narrative is present in the external actor’s communication	Does the narrative display the features of a political myth? Features to look out for: An existing narrative created in a process of production–reception–reproduction. Used to make sense of something. Used to make significance of something. Functions as a determination to act. Can be condensed and recognised in symbolic form by those in the know.
Audience ownership	Is the myth held by the target audience/local population?
Reproduction	Does the external actor reproduce/tell the audience-held myth to carry their own diplomatic message?
Reception	Does the audience receive and interpret the external actor and/or their message using the myth in a process of narrative uptake?

Methodology

Now that the conceptual groundwork for identifying myth diplomacy has been laid, this article moves on to analyse the use of myth diplomacy empirically by examining Zelenskyy’s UK-facing speeches and their subsequent reception in British media. To do this, it takes an interpretivist approach, understanding meaning as, at least in part, produced and reproduced through discourse (Rhodes, 2018). Myth is a constructivist concept, understood as operating through resonance, significance, and the activation of familiar narrative schema. Therefore, a discourse-analytic method is especially well suited to analysing it, allowing the research to trace how meanings are constructed, circulated, and taken up across communicative sites.

As set out in the Introduction, this study focuses on Zelenskyy’s mobilisation of Churchill and WWII myths in UK-facing speeches and traces their uptake in UK media discourse. Churchill and WWII myths are deeply embedded in British political culture and continue to structure public interpretations of leadership, threat, solidarity, and moral duty (Fielding et al., 2020; Kelsey, 2013; Lammers, 2022; Preston, 2014; Toye, 2008). Their prominence makes the United Kingdom a particularly clear setting for observing how an external actor may use audience-held myths as a mechanism of diplomatic influence. The United Kingdom was also among Ukraine’s earliest and strongest supporters after Russia’s full-scale invasion, and Zelenskyy addressed UK audiences repeatedly during the early years of the war, generating a coherent corpus of speeches suitable for systematic analysis.

The speech corpus consists of all addresses delivered by President Zelenskyy in the United Kingdom or at least directed to UK audiences, in person or online, between February 2022 and January 2025. These speeches were collected from the official website of the Office of the President of Ukraine and comprise the address to the House of Commons on 8 March 2022; the speech to the Churchill Society on 26 July 2022; the address to both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall on 8 February 2023; the online address to UK university students on 25 October 2024; and the address at the UK-hosted European Political Community Summit at Blenheim Palace on 18 July 2024. Together, these speeches span a crucial period during which Ukraine sought to consolidate international support, and they represent the complete set of Zelenskyy’s UK-facing diplomatic communications during this time. They are treated as acts of public diplomacy because they were designed for broad public consumption, delivered in venues that provide pooled media access and immediate national retransmission. Supporting this view, the leader of Zelenskyy’s political party, Davyd Arakhamia, confirmed in a BBC documentary interview that such international speeches were conceived with foreign publics firmly in mind (Waldman and Lee-Ray, 2024).

To examine how these appeals were received and whether their mythic elements entered the work-on-myth cycle, UK press coverage for the 7 days following each speech was analysed to confirm narrative uptake. These were sourced via Nexis. Articles and broadcast transcripts were analysed for whether commentators repeated or drew on the mythic schemas identified in Zelenskyy’s speeches, and whether they interpreted Ukraine’s situation through the Churchill or WWII myths. This stage of the analysis, therefore, captures the reception and reproduction phases of myth diplomacy. More information on coding, sources, and full references for sources can be found in the online codebook appendix.

To contextualise these discursive patterns and illuminate the communicative reasoning underpinning the speeches, an elite interview was conducted with a senior member of Zelenskyy’s speechwriting and advisory team. Because only a small number of individuals are directly involved in drafting the President’s international speeches (Harding, 2022; Hodunova, 2024; Shashkova, 2023), this participant provides rare insight into the workings of a small team. The interview was conducted online in November 2024 and, in line with university ethics protocols and the nature of the participant’s ongoing governmental role during wartime, was not recorded. Instead, detailed notes were taken and anonymised. The interview is a supplementary interpretive resource that helps clarify the intentions and constraints shaping Zelenskyy’s use of audience-held myths.

The analysis proceeded iteratively. Zelenskyy’s speeches were first read for use of Churchill and WWII myths in his diplomatic messaging, following the identifiers set out in Table 1. UK media coverage was then examined using the same logic to trace narrative uptake, repetition, and symbolic reinforcement. Finally, insights from the elite interview supported the interpretation of the findings and clarified the communicative intentions underlying the observed discursive choices.

Empirical case: Zelenskyy’s use of Churchill and WWII myths

This empirical section begins by analysing, in thematic terms, how Zelenskyy has deployed Churchill and WWII references in his speeches, specifically investigating their roles in generating sense, significance, and calls to action. Following this analysis of Zelenskyy’s rhetorical strategies, the section transitions to examine the response of the UK press, again using the frameworks of sense-making, significance, and calls to action to structure the analysis. In integrating these two strands, the section clarifies both how Zelenskyy has utilised political myth as a mechanism of influence in the UK context and, more broadly, how political myth can be empirically traced and understood as a mechanism of diplomatic influence. Dates have been provided in brackets by all sources that can be found in the online codebook, which contains full bibliographic references.

Zelenskyy’s use of the Churchill and WWII myths

Beginning the analysis of Zelenskyy’s use of UK myths with the sense-making dimension, Zelenskyy repeatedly drew on the Churchill and WWII narratives to render Ukraine’s situation intelligible to a British audience by embedding it within familiar narratives. In his first address to the UK Parliament, he declared: ‘We do not want to lose what we have, what is ours – Ukraine. Just as you did not want to lose your island when the Nazis were preparing to start the battle for your great power, the Battle for Britain’ (Zelenskyy, 8 March 2022). Here, he grounded Ukraine’s experience in one of Britain’s most enduring national myths – the story of standing alone against tyranny. He positioned Ukraine’s defence of its sovereignty as a contemporary counterpart to Britain’s wartime resistance, allowing UK audiences to make sense of Ukraine’s struggle through a familiar narrative story of the Battle of Britain.

Narratives such as this were used throughout all of Zelenskyy’s speeches to make sense of Ukraine’s wartime experience for his UK audience. For example, in Zelenskyy’s last speech analysed for this research project, he stated:

80 years ago, Manchester survived the Christmas Blitz. This spring, the whole of Ukraine survived the Easter Blitz. 80 years ago, the Nazis razed Coventry. This year, the Ruscists created dozens of new Coventries in Ukraine. These are Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka, Kharkiv, Mariupol. (Zelenskyy, 25 October 2024)

Here, he used the Blitz to help the UK audience understand Ukraine’s wartime experience, explaining the suffering Ukraine is going through at the hands of Russia as similar to the suffering the United Kingdom endured during the Blitz. During the interview, our participant revealed that he read a book about the Blitz and personal stories of experiencing it, and, relatedly, Zelenskyy read a book about Churchill. He identified parallels between the United Kingdom then and Ukraine now and used them to inform his work, making sense of Ukraine’s current experience for the UK audience.

Churchill was similarly used to make sense. For example, in one speech, Zelenskyy took a famous Churchill speech and rewrote it:

We shall fight in the seas, we shall fight in the air, we shall defend our land, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight in the woods, in the fields, on the beaches, in the cities and villages, in the streets, we shall fight in the hills . . . And I want to add we shall fight on the spoil tips, on the banks of the Kalmius and the Dnieper! And we shall not surrender. (Zelenskyy, 8 March 2022)

Just as Churchill declared that the United Kingdom would fight across these settings to victory in WWII, Zelenskyy was explaining that Ukraine would do the same. The familiar narrative of Churchill and WWII explained Ukraine’s position to the UK audience. This point that Zelenskyy used UK myths to make sense of Ukraine for the UK audience is basic, but a fundamental element of myth diplomacy as set out in Table 1.

Moving to significance, it has been established that myths do not simply make events intelligible; they make them matter. They bring events closer to the audience’s lived world and give them an affective weight. In Zelenskyy’s speeches, this affective dimension was central: he reproduced the Churchill and WWII myths, semi-permanent narratives told and retold in the United Kingdom, to make them emotionally and morally significant for the UK audience. When he reworked Churchill’s famous ‘we shall fight on the beaches’ speech, Zelenskyy was not simply explaining; he was activating the emotional charge of one of Churchill’s most famous speeches, a national rallying cry. Through that frame, Ukraine appears as the contemporary site of the same struggle for freedom, while Russia is positioned as tyranny’s latest incarnation. The effect is to compress both moral and emotional distance. Ukraine’s war is rendered legible as part of a story Britons already inhabit, making it matter to the audience.

As noted earlier, Zelenskyy reportedly read a book about Churchill. The interview participant also referenced the film The Darkest Hour as a ‘cool movie,’ an Oscar-winning film that climaxes with Churchill’s famous ‘we shall fight them on the beaches’ speech. The decision to tap into this emotive speech and its place in the British political psyche was deliberate.

Returning to the Blitz example analysed in the sense-making dimension earlier, Zelenskyy similarly reproduced this story to make significance of Ukraine for the United Kingdom. The Blitz story, of ordinary Britons enduring hardship with stoic unity and courage, has long been used in the United Kingdom to ascribe moral value to suffering and to turn endurance itself into a marker of national virtue. By referencing the ‘Christmas Blitz’ and the ‘Easter Blitz,’ Zelenskyy (25 October 2024) was inviting the UK audience to feel Ukraine’s experience through the same emotional register, again transforming Ukraine’s civilian suffering into a continuation of the British story of suffering and resilience, with the emotional baggage that comes with it. It wove Ukraine’s war into the British mythic universe.

Another example of Zelenskyy taking the semi-permanent and established Churchill and WWII myths, and reproducing them to make sense and significance, can be found in his speech when he accepted the Winston Churchill Leadership Award. Zelenskyy stated:

This award would not be possible if the entire Ukrainian people had not risen up to defend freedom from the attack of tyranny, as Boris said now, a tyranny that is trying to return us to the worst that happened in the 20th century and that was then defeated thanks to the factor of Churchill in particular. (Zelenskyy, 26 July 2022)

Zelenskyy reactivated the Churchill schema of leadership under existential threat and moral clarity against tyranny and relocated Ukraine within it. Furthermore, by naming Russia as a return of ‘the worst that happened in the 20th century’, Zelenskyy both made sense of and highlighted the significance of the situation, presenting Russia as a threat akin to Nazi Germany and a threat to the independence and peace the UK fought for in WWII. The proximisation effect of myth is again very apparent here, as is Zelenskyy’s skilful use of it in his public diplomacy activities.

So far, this article has presented examples of Zelenskyy using the Churchill and WWII myths to make sense and significance. The final dimension to analyse is his use of their determinations to act to call the audience to action. As set out in Table 1, myth diplomacy not only takes pre-existing myths held by the audience and reproduces them to make sense and significance, but also to orient the audience towards action. This dimension of myth was specifically remarked on by our interview participant, who stated that myths is ‘not just a dream, not just words, [but rather] a dream that can influence real life’. They stated that using audience-held myths can be useful because they can call for specific actions needed now, and that using the myth narrative can prime the audience for those actions without asking for them directly, which can be more jarring.

Looking specifically at examples of Zelenskyy reproducing the Churchill and WWII myths to call the United Kingdom to action, the most direct case of this can be found in his speech at the European Political Community Summit hosted by the United Kingdom in Blenheim Palace:

We are now at Blenheim, and indeed, this place is associated with Winston Churchill [. . .] Among many, it is him who we remember with special esteem, and it is he who adds grandeur to Blenheim [. . .]We return to his speeches and measure our own principles against his decisions, aspiring to similar heights. Yet, it was not this that created his legend. It was his ability to be a steadfast barrier between history and cowardice, and that is the key reason people still look up to him. Bravery made Churchill – Churchill. Bravery won the greatest battle of his life. It was the battle for Britain and, of course, for all Europe . . . Will Europe be a continent that neither surrenders nor sells itself to tyrants? Will Europe be a continent of nations and communities, not a few führers and their hatred? It was resolved then. And we all see how much the bravery of previous generations has won for us. They secured this Europe for us, which has been peaceful for so long. And now, our bravery and cooperation must achieve no less, so that the children of our nations can someday lookback at us – at what we’ve done, at what we’ve chosen, at what we have promised –and see the pillars of their peace, their security, and their prosperity just as we see it when we look back at the most famous person from Blenheim. (18 July 2024)

This speech clearly reproduced the Churchill myth’s determination to act to orient behaviour in the present. By explicitly invoking Churchill’s ‘bravery’ as the foundation of Europe’s freedom, Zelenskyy used the Churchill myth as a call to action. His questions to the audience transform the Churchill myth’s historical lesson into a moral test: as Churchill once embodied courage and steadfastness in defence of Europe’s freedom, so too must today’s leaders and publics act with equal bravery in defence of Ukraine. Zelenskyy’s reproduction of the Churchill myth thus served as a diplomatic appeal. Preserving Churchill’s legacy means continuing his fight, and that means standing with Ukraine.

Looking at the WWII myths, a clear example of Zelenskyy taking the existing semi-permanent narratives and reproducing them to call to action can be found in his speech to Westminster Hall. Zelenskyy (8 February 2023) started by referencing a sense of bravery he felt when he sat in Churchill’s chair at the Churchill War Rooms, priming audiences to view him and Ukraine through the lens of Churchill and WWII myths. He told the audience that the United Kingdom and Ukraine ‘defended freedom in the Second World War’ and that ‘Ukrainians and Brits defeated the fear of war and had the time to enjoy peace’, before then talking about Russia as the new evil to be defeated:

Once the old evil is defeated, the new one is attempting to rise its head. Do you have a feeling that the evil will crumble once again? I can see it in your eyes now. We think the same way as you do. We know freedom will win. We know Russia will lose. We know the Victory will change the world! And this will be a change that the world has long needed. The United Kingdom is marching with us towards the most important victory of our lifetime. It will be a victory over the very idea of the war. After we win together, any aggressor – big or small – will know what awaits him if he attacks international order.

In this passage, Zelenskyy reproduced the WWII myth to mobilise its embedded determination to act. By positioning Russia as the ‘new evil’ rising again, he activated the moral binary at the heart of the WWII myth – freedom versus tyranny, good versus evil – and invited the UK audience to re-enact their own historical role within that myth. The reference to ‘marching with us towards the most important victory of our lifetime’ is a call for solidarity and material support, drawing on the story of Britain and WWII. Through this framing, Zelenskyy was calling the audience to action. Just as Britain once stood firm against fascism, it must now stand with Ukraine against aggression.

Together, these examples show Zelenskyy’s systematic reproduction of the Churchill and WWII myths across all three dimensions of myth diplomacy: to make sense of events, to make them significant, and to activate their determinations to act. In each case, he used audience-held, semi-permanent narratives as vehicles through which Ukraine’s struggle could be interpreted and responded to. By doing so, he drew on myths already deeply rooted in the UK’s collective imagination, capable of mobilising emotion, meaning, and moral purpose simultaneously. They made sense of Ukraine’s situation through emotionally charged mythic frames, made it significant by aligning Ukraine’s cause with Britain’s own identity, and adapted the myth’s action script to call for action in support of Ukraine.

UK reactions to Zelenskyy’s speeches

In the days following Zelenskyy’s speeches, the British press actively participated in the work on myth process, amplifying and extending his Churchill and WWII references to make sense of the conflict for domestic audiences. Many outlets reproduced his words directly, preserving the mythic framing through which he had invited the United Kingdom to interpret Ukraine’s struggle. For instance, The Telegraph’s (8 March 2022) report on his first Commons address, titled ‘Volodymyr Zelensky speech: Ukrainian President vows to fight Russians in “forests, fields and on shores” as he channels Winston Churchill’, echoed his phrasing almost verbatim, ensuring that the Churchill narrative remained the dominant interpretive lens through which British readers understood Ukraine’s war effort:

Volodymyr Zelensky told MPs on Tuesday that Ukrainians will fight Russian invaders ‘in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets’ in a rousing speech that channelled the spirit of Winston Churchill. Speaking via video link to the Commons, the Ukrainian president said: ‘We will not give up, and we will not lose. We will fight to the end in the sea, in the air. We will fight for our land, whatever the costs. We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets. ‘Mr Zelensky thanked the British Government for its support, but called on Western nations to increase their sanctions against Russia.

Elsewhere, journalists reproduced the frames in their own voice. On This Morning (9 February 2023), reacting to the Westminster Hall speech, a presenter framed Zelenskyy himself as ‘almost Churchillian’, invoking Churchill’s 1940 request for US weapons to argue, ‘give him the tools to finish the job’. Here, the press did more than quote Zelenskyy’s use of Churchill; it reproduced the Churchill myth to interpret Zelenskyy’s leadership and implied the appropriateness of material support.

This positive reception and active reproduction extended beyond journalists. When Zelenskyy received the Churchill Leadership Award, given to him by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister remarked: ‘In that moment of supreme crisis, you faced a test of leadership that was, in its way, as severe as Churchill’s challenge in 1940’ (see codebook: The Independent, 26 July 2022). Like the media, the Prime Minister himself adopted and rearticulated the Churchill myth to make sense of Zelenskyy’s role for a UK audience, a process that Zelenskyy himself initiated in his speech just days before.

Regarding significance, UK media coverage continued the work-on-myth process by taking Zelenskyy’s Churchill and WWII narratives and grounding Ukraine’s struggle within them, even beyond what Zelenskyy himself had said. As noted already, This Morning (9 February 2023) presenters described Zelenskyy as ‘Churchillian’. They also retold Churchill’s 1940 appeal to Roosevelt for weapons as a comparison to Zelenskyy’s actions in the United Kingdom, and concluded, ‘if Russia wants to issue those statements, let them go ahead’, in defiance of Russian threats around arming Ukraine. In doing so, they used the Churchill myth to bring Ukraine and Zelenskyy’s position emotionally closer to the UK audience, casting Zelenskyy as the brave Churchill figure and the United Kingdom as Roosevelt, framing that is emotionally charged given the significance of Churchill and WWII to the UK national psyche, and which compresses the distance between Ukraine’s fight for survival and the UK’s own.

Another example of the UK press continuing Zelenskyy’s work on myth to make Ukraine significant for British audiences appears in The Independent’s (8 March 2022) coverage of his first speech to Parliament. The article opened by noting that ‘Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy evoked wartime British leader Winston Churchill . . .’, describing it as ‘a speech that evoked the stirring “never surrender” speech delivered by Churchill in 1940 during the darkest days of World War II’. In his address, Zelenskyy deliberately mobilised the Churchill and WWII myths to bring Ukraine’s struggle emotionally closer to the United Kingdom, and the press reproduced these same frames. Zelenskyy was Churchill, and the war was a continuation of the UK’s story of courage and defiance.

Finally, British media extended the determination to act dimension of Zelenskyy’s myth diplomacy, continuing the work on myth process he had set in motion. Across outlets, Churchill’s action script of bravery, endurance, and material resolve was reanimated in the present tense, transforming the myth into a contemporary call to action. Like This Morning’s (10 February 2023) comparison between Zelenskyy asking the United Kingdom for support and Churchill asking the United States for support, Good Morning Britain (9 February 2023) observed that ‘the Ukrainian President invoked the wartime spirit of Winston Churchill on his surprise visit to London, putting pressure on Rishi Sunak to provide his country with fighter planes’. Journalists were actively taking the Churchill myth and using it to call for action from the UK, beyond Zelenskyy’s own statements.

These examples are not alone. A GB News (9 March 2022) commentator observed that ‘he was trying to appeal to our own wartime spirit and perhaps hoping we might get a bit more involved as a result of that’, while The Sun (9 March 2022) described the address as ‘stirring as it was historic. Shakespeare, then Churchill. It cannot have failed to move the hearts and harden the resolve of our MPs and millions watching’. Such coverage merged admiration with moral expectation. Zelenskyy’s invocation of Churchill was not only celebrated but taken as an implicit call for courage, leadership, and tangible support. Being ‘Churchillian’ came to signify providing arms to Ukraine, demonstrating resolve, and standing firm against tyranny.

Collectively, these examples show that the UK press did not simply echo Zelenskyy’s words but became an active participant in the work-on-myth process, extending the Churchill and WWII narratives across all three dimensions identified in Table 1. Journalists explained the war within familiar stories, brought the Ukrainian story emotionally closer by mapping it onto the experiences and legacy of the UK’s WWII stories, and translated the myths’ narrative into contemporary imperatives of courage, resolve, and support for Ukraine. Zelenskyy initiated this process by reproducing the semi-permanent narratives of Churchill and WWII to frame Ukraine’s struggle. At the same time, the British press received, rearticulated, and amplified these mythic schemas – often beyond what Zelenskyy himself had said – continuing the cycle of production, reception, and reproduction that sustains myth’s influence.

Conclusion

Moving to the conclusion, this article set out to address two questions: (1) How can myths be used as a mechanism of influence in public diplomacy? (2) How were myths held by UK audiences mobilised in President Zelenskyy’s speeches to invite support for Ukraine? In answering these questions, it introduced myth diplomacy, defined as the mobilisation of audience-held political myths in diplomatic communication to ascribe significance and invite action, and set out operational indicators for identifying it in practice.

The empirical analysis traced this mechanism in action in Zelenskyy’s UK-facing speeches. It demonstrated that Zelenskyy repeatedly activated Churchill and WWII myths to frame Ukraine’s struggle in terms that made sense, significance, and inspired action. For example, his Westminster Hall reference to sitting in Churchill’s chair and describing the ‘feeling of bravery’ it carried was made in a speech calling on the United Kingdom to provide more support to Ukraine and stand up to Russia. UK press and broadcast coverage then took up and extended these framings, describing Zelenskyy as ‘Churchillian’, invoking wartime spirit, and presenting support for Ukraine as consistent with Britain’s historical role. Read together, these patterns show myth diplomacy operating through a work-on-myth cycle of production, reception, and reproduction. Influence was not confined to the speech act itself, but travelled as mythic schemas were reiterated and elaborated in the wider public sphere.

The analysis of Zelenskyy’s use of Churchill and WWII myths, and UK press reactions to them, allowed this article to demonstrate the role of myth in diplomatic communication. The article conceptualised political myth as a mechanism of diplomatic influence, one that combines sense-making, significance-making, and action-orientation, and distinguished it from adjacent lenses that foreground narrative design, memory politics, or analogy. The Zelenskyy example then demonstrated myth diplomacy, defined by its unique properties/mechanisms of influence, in practice, and how it can be studied empirically in future research. Zelenskyy used the myths to shape how the UK media interpreted him and Ukraine, to make it matter to the distant audience, and to inspire calls for bravery, resistance, and action.

These contributions have real-world implications. For speechwriters and diplomatic practitioners, myth diplomacy underscores the resonance that can result from recognising and reproducing audience-held myths to shape how audiences interpret and respond to an issue. Zelenskyy offers an example of myth diplomacy done well, with messaging that mapped neatly onto a reproduced audience-held myth, making sense, adding significance, and calling to action. Leaders beyond Zelenskyy have engaged in this kind of messaging before, but with a clearer understanding of its mechanisms of influence, this article can enable more conscious, better-informed practice in the future.

Finally, by introducing the new concept of myth diplomacy, the article opens the way for a wider research agenda on myth and diplomacy within Constructivist IR. The conceptual platform developed here offers new threads for further inquiry. For example, now myth is recognised and identifiable as a mechanism of influence in diplomacy, future inquiry could map variation in myth diplomacy across a wider sea of cases and audiences to explore when mythic appeals resonate, fracture, or backfire (including counter-myths and contestation) and to trace how digital and hybrid media environments accelerate, transform, or disrupt cycles of myth reproduction. These directions would further illuminate both the power and limitations of myth as a mechanism of influence in diplomacy, and are only possible by centring around myth and analysing the use of myth narratives in diplomatic communication through the lens of myth, as this article has sought to do.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-bpi-10.1177_13691481261435360 – Supplemental material for Invoking Churchill: Zelenskyy’s use of myth diplomacy in the United Kingdom

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-bpi-10.1177_13691481261435360 for Invoking Churchill: Zelenskyy’s use of myth diplomacy in the United Kingdom by Thomas Eason and Artur Nadiiev in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

Supplemental Material

sj-xlsx-2-bpi-10.1177_13691481261435360 – Supplemental material for Invoking Churchill: Zelenskyy’s use of myth diplomacy in the United Kingdom

Supplemental material, sj-xlsx-2-bpi-10.1177_13691481261435360 for Invoking Churchill: Zelenskyy’s use of myth diplomacy in the United Kingdom by Thomas Eason and Artur Nadiiev in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations