Bare chest (and face), the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has explained to the magazine North American ‘Time‘ how he lived the first hours of the russian invasion: confess that forces of the kremlin they intended to capture and assassinate him, and that they tried twice in order to quickly take control of the country.
Although his memories are “disordered”, says the president, the dawn of February 24 has remained engraved in his memory. That day the war began. He and his wife Olena ZelenskaThey woke up their 17 and 9 year old sons to tell them that the shelling had started and that they had to prepare to flee. “There was a lot of noise. Explosions could be heard.”
The capital was no longer safe: the Ukrainian army informed the president that the Russian soldiers had launched into parachute to kill or capture him and his family.
TIME’s new cover: Over two weeks in April @shustry went inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s compound for a look at how the Ukrainian President and his top advisers are experiencing the war https://t.co/9bmZXfvy8e pic.twitter.com/4PAxf97eNM
— TIME (@TIME) April 28, 2022
Not knowing how to use weapons
As night fell on the first day of the war, there were shootings around the government district, reports ‘Time’, which records that the guards inside the compound turned off the lights and brought bulletproof vests and assault rifles for Zelenski and a dozen of his assistants.
But only a few knew how to use weapons, among them the veteran of Ukraine’s military intelligence service Oleksiy Arestovych. “That was absolute madness,” says the soldier. That same night, the Ukrainian leader told European leaders via videoconference that “this could be the last time they see me alive.”
“We had only seen things like this in the movies”
Related news
The magazine has published in its latest issue the report ‘Inside Zelensky’s world‘. In early April, the reporter simon shuster accompanied Zelensky for two weeks in the presidential palace in Kyiv. The cover photo, where Zelensky appears in profile, was taken at the bunker of the president located in the capital of the country.
Shuster recounts what it is like, in the middle of the war, his day to day and that of his team in the palace offices that have become their homes and from where Zelensky directs his response to the Russian invasion. “We had only seen things in the movies,” says the president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.
www.elperiodico.com
Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.