Kuala Lampur, March 2 -- Once upon a time, Volodymyr Zelensky was a comedian. Not a particularly great one, but a competent enough entertainer-his greatest act was pretending to play a president on TV. Then one day, life imitated art, and Ukraine, sick of corruption and oligarchs, decided to roll the dice on a political outsider. It was a good script - fresh, unexpected, the kind that wins awards. But here's the problem with comedians who find themselves in power: they start thinking the audience is laughing with them, when in reality, they're the joke.

Fast forward to today, and Zelensky isn't playing a fictional president anymore - he's playing warlord. But he's not doing it with his own army, his own resources, or even his own strateg...