President Zelenskyy’s wife has revealed what she believes to be Vladimir Putin’s ‘fatal mistake’ as she reflects on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Despite the destruction Putin’s attack has inflicted upon Ukraine, the Kremlin has failed to capture most of the country's major cities, including the capital of Kyiv.
Olena Zelenska, the First Lady of Ukraine, has opened up about the strength of the country led by her husband Volodymyr Zelenskyy, what life is like under siege and the key mistake made by the Russian President in an interview with Vogue.
When asked about her mix of personal and civic feelings, she replied: “The war immediately combined the personal and public. And this is probably the fatal mistake of the tyrant who attacked us. We are all Ukrainians first, and then everything else.”
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Describing how Putin wanted to divide Ukraine and create internal confrontation, Zelenska said it’s ‘impossible to do this with Ukrainians’.
“When one of us is tortured, raped, or killed, we feel that we all are being tortured, raped, or killed,” she continued.
“We do not need propaganda to feel civic consciousness, and to resist. It is this personal anger and pain, which we all feel, that instantly activates the thirst to act, to resist aggression, to defend our freedom.”
In the face of Russia’s continued attack, Zelenska has refused to flee the country to leave her husband in a warzone and has been open and honest about the situation with her nine-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter.
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Speaking about what it was like on the first day, 24 February, she said: “I woke up, sometime between 4 and 5am, because of a clunk. I didn’t immediately realise it was an explosion. I didn’t understand what it could be.
“My husband wasn’t in bed. But when I got up, I saw him at once, already dressed, in a suit as usual (this was the last time I’d see him in a suit and a white shirt – from then on it was military). ‘It started.’ That’s all he said.”
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Although Zelenska had initially hoped to stay by Zelenskyy’s side, she and her children were ordered to move to as safe a place as possible in the country as the President’s office was being used as a military facility.
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She went on to describe the horrors of Russia’s military action, highlighting Mariupol, Bucha and the dozens of children killed by shell fragments in their hometowns.
“I can’t even describe it. It makes me speechless,” she said. “But it is necessary to look at it.”
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When asked what Ukraine needs from other nations including the US, she highlighted Zelenskyy’s request for a no-fly zone, stating: “The democratic world must be united and give a tough response, thus showing that in the 21st century there is no place for killing civilians and encroaching on foreign territory.”
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Topics: Ukraine, Russia, World News, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky