From the beginning of the attack, on February 24, Russian forces targeted the Ukrainian government district in kyiv. In the presidential premises, Volodymyr Zelensky and his family are directly in danger. The Ukrainian army warns the head of state that Russian soldiers have parachuted into kyiv with the aim of killing or capturing him.
Time journalist Simon Shuster spent two weeks immersed in the bunker of the Ukrainian capital’s presidential palace, from where Zelensky now operates. The Ukrainian president and his entourage gave him their testimonies. Zelensky recounted one scene in particular: the time when he and his wife, Olena, had to wake up their children – a 17-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son – to tell them that they had to prepare to flee their home in reason for the beginning of the bombardments. “We woke them up. It’s noisy, there were explosions everywhere,” he recalls.
The presidential residence is then quickly protected: the barricaded building with what is at hand. Meanwhile, fighting breaks out.
In the bunker, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk, who joined Zelensky from February 24 in his residence, tells the Time not having seen fear on the head of state’s face. He seemed rather bewildered that it had come to this. “We felt the world order was collapsing,” said Ruslan Stefanchuk, as the president had been warning for several months about the risks of such an attack.
Oleksiy Arestovych, of the military intelligence service, remembers the first hours “of total madness”. Russian troops twice tried to storm the building where Zelensky was, in the early hours, while his wife and children were still there as well. “Russian troops almost intercepted President Zelensky and his family during the first hours of the war,” admits an adviser. Russian gunfire was heard near the palace.
The Ukrainian president also had the possibility of leaving the country for Poland, with the help of the Americans or the British, which he refused. “I stay in the capital. My family is also in Ukraine. My children are in Ukraine. My family members are not traitors, they are Ukrainian citizens. However, I have no right to say where they are. find exactly,” Zelensky said in an address to the nation on February 25.
The head of state ends up going to a bunker, where he stays for several weeks, and from which he continues to lead the country. In recent weeks, he has exposed himself more to the outside, in particular to go to the front areas or to welcome international leaders, who come in support. At Time, Volodymyr Zelensky is concerned about the diminishing attention paid by the rest of the world to this war, two months after the start of the conflict.