The interview is just the second public appearance of the Zelenskies together since the start of the conflict: We haven’t seen each other for two and a half months, my family destroyed like any Ukrainian family
FROM OUR SEND
KIEV— Tomorrow is three months. And Olena Zelenska sees it all again, that dawn of February 24: I remember waking up with strange sounds outside, as probably happened to everyone. It was dark, almost night, and I saw that Volodymyr was not next to me. I went into the next room and he was already dressed in a suit, but without a tie. I asked him: “What’s going on? ‘” And he replied: “started”. I can’t describe the emotions. Anxiety, amazement. He told me this and left. After that, we haven’t seen each other for a long time.
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From first lady to lady of iron (and fire). Olena Zelenska goes on TV for the first time with her husband president and at least takes it with irony, she who in another life wrote the sketches of the Zelensky-comedian and now finds herself thanking the BBC for having brought them all together. two around a table, with a cup of tea biscuits: This interview allows us to spend time together… (Yes, a TV date… the Ukrainian president laughs, from the side, Thank you, really!). What a luxury: But yes, he lives for his work and in the family we can no longer see him …. Also because Volodymyr Zelensky was the number one target of the Russians and Olena with the two boys, Oleksandra and Kyrylo, 17 and 9 years old, target number two. He in the bunker, she hiding somewhere: For two and a half months, we haven’t seen him at all. We only spoke on the phone. Our broken family, like any Ukrainian family. To be clear: Nobody takes my husband from me, not even the war.
Separated in war, Volodymyr and Olena have always been inseparable in peacetime. Born in 1978, lives parallel and the same age since the university in Kryvi Rig: the young and tenacious Ze who it had taken him eight years to snatch her from a boyfriend and make her say yes; Olena Kiyashko who in the end even agreed to be baptized as an adult in an Orthodox church in order to marry him. He who became more and more popular with her shows, she who gave up being an architect to follow him in the studios of Kvartal 95. He is in the spotlight and happy to bring his 14-year-old daughter to play on the set; she backstage looking after the little boy who had just started elementary school. At first, Olena did not welcome the idea of Zelensky leaving TV for politics: I was totally against it. And I told him very aggressively. I saw the difficulties. It didn’t even seem like a project to me: it was a total change of direction in our lives.
She could not have imagined, however, such a development of the script: the last time she saw her husband, before this interview, was a few days ago. at the funeral of the first Ukrainian president, Kravchuk. I’ve always hoped to stay in the shadows, Olena once said, but if your husband does this job, there are duties you cannot delegate to anyone: first of all, keeping your nerves of steel in a trench like this. The first lady is succeeding: We will be back, she writes now on social media, because there is nothing better than going home. Longing for a normal life: I will go back to my school. To my cup. To my chestnuts. To my relatives. We are unfortunate to have a neighbor who demonstrates brotherhood with missiles and terror…. Once, Olena wore her Piaget chronographs on cream suits. Today she bites the minutes, to keep the family together in the darkest hour.
May 22, 2022 (change May 23, 2022 | 09:51)
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