According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian forces tried to enter government buildings on the night of February 24, when the President of Ukraine and his family were there.
In an interview with Time magazine, Zelensky describes that, on the night the Russian invasion began, he was with his wife and children when he was warned by the military that Russian paratroopers had landed in Kiev to try to capture or kill the president and his family. And from that moment on, everything changed.
“We woke up the children. There was noise. There were explosions. I came to the office. Almost all of us got together to act quickly”, recalls the Ukrainian president, although he confesses that his memory of that night is “fragmented”.
His wife Olena and their children, aged 9 and 17, prepared to leave the presidential offices and those who stayed were given weapons – Zelensky included – as they watched the presidential guard barricade everything they could find.
“Before that night, we had only seen things like this in the movies”, confesses to the magazine the chief of staff of the Ukrainian presidency, Andriy Yermak.
Faced with the shootings that erupted around government buildings, the guards forced everyone to put on bulletproof vests, turn off the lights in their offices and pick up their weapons.
Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of the Ukrainian secret services and one of the officers who knew how to use the weapons, says that “it was absolute madness”.
Faced with danger, security officials tried to get Zelensky to take cover in the bunker, “equipped to withstand a long siege”, which awaits him “somewhere outside the capital”.
But the Ukrainian president refused, and as the military fought Russian forces in the streets around the Government Palace, Zelensky took out his cell phone and recorded himself walking in the courtyard, alongside several officers.
“We are all here defending our independence, our country”, he said, as if it were proof of life. Of the bulletproof vests, no sign. Just the military-green T-shirts and coats that have become their war uniforms.
After this spontaneous tour, Zelensky wanted to make others, in secret, to the places attacked by Russian forces.
No cameras, no advertising, so I could get to the places without taking great risks and see the reality of the war.
Some of the trips were so secret that the councilors themselves didn’t know about them until two months later. At his side, two friends and a small security team, who “lost their minds” with him.
Today, 65 days after the start of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian president works most days from the Situation Room, a room that is neither fortified nor underground. It is from there that he speaks to the nation, or that he has meetings with generals and military personnel.
Asked if he regrets the decision he made three years ago, to run for the presidency of Ukraine, Zelensky guarantees that he does not: “Not for a second”.
Source: CNN Brasil
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