Ukraine’s president recounts how he and his family survived two direct attacks on the first day of the invasion
In the early hours of February 24, when Russian troops entered Ukraine, they had several clear objectives. One of them was the country’s president, Volodimir Zelensky, a politician then at the bottom of the polls whom the invasion has turned into a symbol. To say that they were after him is not an exaggeration. In those first hours of the attack, assault groups sent by the Kremlin tried twice to assassinate the president and his family. He himself and his closest circle have revealed it in an extensive interview with journalist Simon Shuster, and published in ‘Time’ magazine.
The Zelenskis were in the presidential complex, a group of buildings located on Bankova Street, in the center of kyiv. The shots began to sound close. The president remembers “fragments” of those moments. Among those he will not forget is the moment when, together with his wife Olena Zelenska, he woke up his children – a 17-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy – to prepare them to flee. “We woke them up. It was loud. There were explosions there », he relates.
The government complex has a network of bunkers in which the family and the main members of the government took refuge. All the lights went out and the soldiers guarding the venue handed out bulletproof vests and assault rifles to the ‘premier’ and his assistants. Many, including himself, didn’t know how to use them so they got a crash course. We must not forget that most of his core trust is made up of people who were previously actors, journalists or bloggers, perhaps prepared for diplomacy, but not to handle a weapon. “It was an absolute madhouse,” describes Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, in the American magazine.
Still, the president refused to leave the complex. Not when his security team suggested he go to a secret bunker, nor when the US and UK secret services offered to get him out of the country. That moment in which Zelensky replied “we need weapons, not a plane ride” is already part of the historical narrative of an invasion in which, whether you like it or not, Ukraine has managed to handle the story and communication like no one until now. A few hours later, when Russia claimed that he had fled, Zelenski, with Jewish roots, designated as a Nazi and ridiculed for his past as a comedian, went out to the courtyard of the complex with his advisers and left another iconic moment: «We are all here to defend our independence , our country”.
The Kramatorsk Woman
For gestures like this his team – and his citizens – define him as a “brave” man who a few days later secretly left the compound “to go to one of the checkpoints and see what was happening.” «The first days were hard for all of us (…). You have some responsibilities. You understand that they are looking at you. You are a symbol. You have to act like a head of state should,” he says.
Then there would be his visit to Bucha, with mass graves and corpses littering streets and gardens, and the bombing of the train station in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, where hundreds of women and children waited to escape the war. 50 people died and a hundred were injured. The harshest images of that moment, including that of a woman dressed “in bright and memorable clothes” decapitated by the explosions, came to her shortly before her meeting with Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. “It was one of those moments where your arms and legs are doing one thing, but your head isn’t listening, because your head is right there at the station,” she recalls. That day she was seen hesitating for the first time before the cameras.
Volodimir Zelenski recognizes in ‘Time’ the difficulty of facing these situations, but points out that the worst time of the day is shortly before going to sleep. “I don’t know if I have the right (to rest). Was there something else he needed to do? I look at my schedule. There is no point in looking at it. It’s the same schedule. I see it’s over for today. But I check it several times and I feel that something is wrong. It is my conscience that bothers me. I am going to allow myself to sleep, but surely there is something that is past now ». A responsibility that he does not avoid, because he “does not regret” taking office, but that takes its toll after more than two months of fighting.
“I have grown older. I’ve grown old from all this wisdom I never wanted. It is the wisdom linked to the number of people who have died and the torture perpetrated by Russian soldiers », he recounts before assuring that being « honest », he never had « the goal of achieving knowledge like that ». Along the way, the president of Ukraine has ceased to be a character and has become a leader.
“Germany acts as if it does not want to lose its relationship with Moscow”
“When he’s tired, he can’t act. He says what he thinks, he is himself and makes a greater impression as a man of integrity and humanity ». This is how one of the advisers describes the attitude of Volodimir Zelenski. A way of taking the situation more personal and also less diplomatic that has led the Ukrainian to tell the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that he was not welcome in kyiv and that is also reflected in the interview with ‘Time’ when he refers precisely to the position of the German government. “With the Germans, the situation is really difficult. They act as if they do not want to lose their relationship with Moscow », he criticizes.
He is aware that Western societies may be one step away from paying attention to the conflict that is bleeding their country dry. It is no longer new. “People see this war on Instagram, on social media. When they get tired, they will walk away. It’s a lot of blood, a lot of emotion », she assumes, although without resigning herself. And he repeats his message: _this conflict does not only affect Ukraine, but also “all of Europe”.
Throughout the interview there are some flashes of comic Zelenskiy and he even jokes that if the Russians destroy the presidential building he would get rid of seeing the pompous decoration. Then he returns to a reality in which he acknowledges the many casualties of his Army. “Russia doesn’t seem to care about theirs, but I take seriously the number of people who could die.”
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