"He came to office, it seems, on a platform of little else except his clowning.... Once, when called a clown, Zelensky did not argue, but..."

"...  posted a video on Instagram of his own face with a big red nose upon it. The refusal to act like a grownup infuriated Zelensky’s opponents as much as Groucho Marx infuriated his political opponents in Fredonia, in 'Duck Soup,' with his unseriousness.... [W]atching Zelensky now, one does not think, Oh, wow, he once was a comedian! One thinks, This is what a comedian looks like in power.... The one willing to degrade oneself knowingly, as a clown does, is the one afterward most able to act with dignity.... In interviews with the French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy in 2019, Zelensky made it clear that he was quite aware of the interconnection between his place as a clown and his role as a leader. When Lévy asked him if he could make even Vladimir Putin laugh 'just as he had made all Russians laugh,' Zelensky insisted that he could. Though, he then added, 'This man does not see; he has eyes, but does not see; or, if he does look, it’s with an icy stare, devoid of all expression.... Laughter is a weapon that is fatal to men of marble'...."

Writes Adam Gopnik in "Volodymyr Zelensky’s Comedic Courage/The Ukrainian leader shows how wit and mockery can undermine brutal authority" (The New Yorker).

From the Wikipedia article "Death from laughter":

Death may result from several pathologies that deviate from benign laughter. Infarction of the pons and the medulla oblongata in the brain may cause pathological laughter.[2] Asphyxiation caused by laughter leads the body to shut down from the lack of oxygen.

Laughter can cause atonia and collapse ("agelastic syncope"),[3][4][5][6] which in turn can cause trauma. See also laughter-induced syncope, cataplexy, and Bezold-Jarisch reflex. Gelastic seizures can be due to focal lesions to the hypothalamus.[7] Depending upon the size of the lesion, the emotional lability may be a sign of an acute condition, and not itself the cause of the fatality. Gelastic syncope has also been associated with the cerebellum.[8]

There's an article at TV Tropes on "Comedy as a Weapon," including some spoilers where laughter is a weapon that is fatal. You might as well read this one, because it's about a 1937 short story that you're unlikely to read, "Mr. Laughter" by Alexander Belyaev:

[T]he protagonist Douglas Spolding discovers the secret mechanism of humor and gains the ability to make anyone laugh uncontrollably. At first, he uses this power more-or-less benevolently, to [counsel] a failing standup comedian named Backford, making the latter an international star again. However, when Backford refuses to pay him, Spolding weaponizes his knowledge, almost giving his employer a heart attack by making him laugh at his jokes until he writes him a check for 10 million dollars. The authorities try to apprehend Spolding, but he just sends entire police squads into uncontrollable laughter fits, proving himself virtually untouchable. His downfall then comes when he decides to marry the wealthiest heiress in the world, carefully preparing a "plan of attack" to force her to accept without killing her... except he finds out that Ms. Fight is already enamored with "the Laughter King", so his entire plan turns out to have been unnecessary — which he finds so funny, his own mind snaps, and he falls into a clinical depression for the rest of his life.

But who is Alexander Belyaev?

He was a Soviet Russian writer — "Russia's Jules Verne" — born in 1884...

Belyaev died of starvation in the Soviet town of Pushkin in 1942 while it was occupied by the Nazis. The exact location of his grave is unknown. A memorial stone at the Kazanskoe cemetery in the town of Pushkin is placed on the mass grave where his body is assumed to be buried.

A marble stone, no doubt.