Each day, President Zelenskiy reads my book on military history. I hope he heeds these warnings | Laurence Rees

The signs are good. Ukraine's leader is avoiding the mistakes of the second world war - while Putin shows every sign of repeating them

The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy's speech to parliament on Wednesday was filled with references to the second world war and Winston Churchill. Just as evil was defeated before, he said, so evil will be defeated today. Comparisons with that momentous conflict have been a common theme throughout Russia's invasion of Ukraine - but at least we can rest assured that Zelenskiy knows what he's talking about.

I was flattered when the Economist reported a few weeks ago that Zelenskiy gets up early each morning and reads from my book, Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War, recently published in Ukrainian translation. I was also impressed that, while trying to win a bloody war against the Russians, he found time to read anything other than official documents.