TIME magazine’s new cover. pic.twitter.com/JiwBVFsu1E
— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) April 28, 2022
"As night fell February 24th, Guards brought bulletproof vests and assault rifles for Zelensky and aides, only a few knew how to handle. Russian troops made two attempts to storm the compound. Zelensky later told me his wife and children were still there."https://t.co/AbkUFK9zg2
— Bianna Golodryga (@biannagolodryga) April 28, 2022
When the ‘special military incursion’ was still just a talking point, a Russian expat on twitter (probably Slava Malamud) talked about how ‘The Moth’ Putin was regarded by his countrymen as a nasty little mid-level bureaucrat. An aging grey functionary whose natural metier would have been gleefully denying office equipment upgrades and meddling with his subordinates’ leave schedules got unexpectedly lucky when the kleptocrat he served as bagman won the murder lottery during the looting of the collapsing Soviet Union.
If that’s anywhere near the truth, the emergence of President Zelenskyy — a Jewish comedian! — as a national icon and a global celebrity has got to be giving him ulcers:
The nights are the hardest, when he lies there on his cot, the whine of the air-raid sirens in his ears and his phone still buzzing beside him. Its screen makes his face look like a ghost in the dark, his eyes scanning messages he didn’t have a chance to read during the day. Some from his wife and kids, many from his advisers, a few from his troops, surrounded in their bunkers, asking him again and again for more weapons to break the Russian siege.
Inside his own bunker, the President has a habit of staring at his daily agenda even when the day is over. He lies awake and wonders whether he missed something, forgot someone. “It’s pointless,” Volodymyr Zelensky told me at the presidential compound in Kyiv, just outside the office where he sometimes sleeps. “It’s the same agenda. I see it’s over for today. But I look at it several times and sense that something is wrong.” It’s not anxiety that keeps his eyes from closing. “It’s my conscience bothering me.”…
Outside Ukraine, Zelensky told me, “People see this war on Instagram, on social media. When they get sick of it, they will scroll away.” It’s human nature. Horrors have a way of making us close our eyes. “It’s a lot of blood,” he explains. “It’s a lot of emotion.” Zelensky senses the world’s attention flagging, and it troubles him nearly as much as the Russian bombs. Most nights, when he scans his agenda, his list of tasks has less to do with the war itself than with the way it is perceived. His mission is to make the free world experience this war the way Ukraine does: as a matter of its own survival…
My request was not just for a chance to question the President. It was to see the war the way he and his team have experienced it. Over two weeks in April, they allowed me to do that in the presidential compound on Bankova Street, to observe their routines and hang around the offices where they now live and work. Zelensky and his staff made the place feel almost normal. We cracked jokes, drank coffee, waited for meetings to start or end. Only the soldiers, our ever present chaperones, embodied the war as they took us around, shining flashlights down dark corridors, past the rooms where they slept on the floor.
The experience illustrated how much Zelensky has changed since we first met three years ago, backstage at his comedy show in Kyiv, when he was still an actor running for President. His sense of humor is still intact. “It’s a means of survival,” he says. But two months of war have made him harder, quicker to anger, and a lot more comfortable with risk. Russian troops came within minutes of finding him and his family in the first hours of the war, their gunfire once audible inside his office walls. Images of dead civilians haunt him. So do the daily appeals from his troops, hundreds of whom are trapped belowground, running out of food, water, and ammunition…
Beyond the checkpoints is the government district, known as the Triangle, which Russian forces tried to seize at the start of the invasion. When those first hours came up in our interview, Zelensky warned me the memories exist “in a fragmented way,” a disjointed set of images and sounds. Among the most vivid took place before sunrise on Feb. 24, when he and his wife Olena Zelenska went to tell their children the bombing had started, and to prepare them to flee their home. Their daughter is 17 and their son is 9, both old enough to understand they were in danger. “We woke them up,” Zelensky told me, his eyes turning inward. “It was loud. There were explosions over there.”
It soon became clear the presidential offices were not the safest place to be. The military informed Zelensky that Russian strike teams had parachuted into Kyiv to kill or capture him and his family. “Before that night, we had only ever seen such things in the movies,” says Andriy Yermak, the President’s chief of staff…
Offers came in from American and British forces to evacuate the President and his team. The idea was to help them set up a government in exile, most likely in eastern Poland, that could continue to lead from afar. None of Zelensky’s advisers recall him giving these offers any serious consideration. Speaking on a secure landline with the Americans, he responded with a zinger that made headlines around the world: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
“We thought that was brave,” says a U.S. official briefed on the call. “But very risky.” Zelensky’s bodyguards felt the same. They also urged him to leave the compound right away. Its buildings are nestled in a densely populated neighborhood, surrounded by private homes that could serve as nests for enemy snipers. Some houses are close enough to throw a grenade through the window from across the street. “The place was wide open,” says Arestovych. “We didn’t even have concrete blocks to close the street.”
Somewhere outside the capital, a secure bunker was waiting for the President, equipped to withstand a lengthy siege. Zelensky refused to go there. Instead, on the second night of the invasion, while Ukrainian forces were fighting the Russians in nearby streets, the President decided to walk outside into the courtyard and film a video message on his phone. “We’re all here,” Zelensky said after doing a roll call of the officials by his side. They were dressed in the army green T-shirts and jackets that would become their war-time uniforms. “Defending our independence, our country.”
By then, Zelensky understood his role in this war. The eyes of his people and much of the world were fixed on him. “You understand that they’re watching,” he says. “You’re a symbol. You need to act the way the head of state must act.”…
Perhaps it was lucky for me to meet the President toward the end of a very long day. Nearly two months into the invasion, he had changed. There were new creases in his face, and he no longer searched the room for his advisers when considering an answer to a question. “I’ve gotten older,” he admitted. “I’ve aged from all this wisdom that I never wanted. It’s the wisdom tied to the number of people who have died, and the torture the Russian soldiers perpetrated. That kind of wisdom,” he added, trailing off. “To be honest, I never had the goal of attaining knowledge like that.”
It made me wonder whether he regretted the choice he made three years ago, around the time we first met. His comedy show had been a hit. Standing in his dressing room, he was still glowing from the admiration of the crowd. Friends waited backstage to start the after-party. Fans gathered outside to take a picture with him. This was just three months into his run for the presidency, when it was not too late for Zelensky to turn back.
But he does not regret the choice he made, not even with the hindsight of the war. “Not for a second,” he told me in the presidential compound. He doesn’t know how the war will end, or how history will describe his place in it. In this moment, he only knows Ukraine needs a wartime President. And that is the role he intends to play.
Read the whole ripping yarn! Bonus content: Interview transcript here.
Bud Gundy – The Story of Darcy O’Brien!
Jerzy Russian
Wow, what an amazing story! I suspect very few people could have risen to the occasion like he did.
zhena gogolia
He has been astounding.
I devoured the first impeachment, minute by minute, and I remember thinking, “God, poor Zelenskyy, between Trump and Putin, what could be worse?” I had no idea he was such a great man.
Mike in NC
Read the Sunday Washington Post online today. Interesting articles on (1) the damage that computer hackers are inflicting at many levels on Putin’s police state, and (2) the brain drain that is gathering speed as thousands of talented professionals want no part of continuing to live in Putin’s police state.
Mike in NC
@zhena gogolia: Zelenskyy missed the opportunity to declare right in the Oval Office about how he was being forced to deal with two evil gangsters.
Another Scott
If anyone is going to save the world, it’s people like Zelenskyy and Marin who are doing the work.
Eyes on the prizes.
(via Oryx – https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop )
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
I read this article when it first popped up on Twitter. It certainly wasn’t what he signed up for, but Zelenskyy’s really risen to the occasion!
zhena gogolia
@Mike in NC: He was walking a tightrope greased with motor oil.
Ishiyama
@zhena gogolia:
The difficulty with dismissing the Great Man theory of history is that history keeps turning up people like him.
debbie
@Another Scott:
Has anyone ever misjudged a situation as badly as Putin? I’m not buying this intelligence failure. Putin was so blinded by his vision of Russia’s return to glory, he only listened to himself.
debbie
@Mike in NC:
Absurd.
Gin & Tonic
Zelensky is proving to be the leader for the moment, yes, but what he also has is a nation that, after centuries of being told they are lesser, untermenschen, have finally had enough.
Alison Rose ???
I just read this earlier today and I keep thinking…imagine something like this being thrust upon your shoulders. I mean, anyone who runs for president/leader of a country knows they are potentially signing up to deal with disaster or tragedy, often many of them. But the scale of what he is dealing with and the hundreds of various threads to keep untangled…it’s hard to comprehend. I know he wasn’t very popular in Ukraine before this, but it’s incredible to see how admirably he has stepped into the role his country needed him to take on.
Alison Rose ???
@Gin & Tonic: Truth. It’s not just their president who has proven himself worthy, it’s all of them.
Another Scott
@debbie: Yup. Galeev makes the same point.
(Insert “Dirty Harry” – “A man’s gotta know his limitations” gif)
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
They’ve had enough, and they know how to do what needs to be done. Some of the videos I’ve watched on Twitter are jaw dropping.
PJ
@Alison Rose ???: leadership has much to do with morale. If Zelensky had fled Kiev, would the Ukrainian Army have fought the way it has, and would the Ukrainian people have resisted the way they have?
But the converse is also true. If the Ukrainian Army and people had not stood up and done what what they did, Zelensky’s speeches would not be worthless, but would not have changed anything.
debbie
@Another Scott:
Good god, this tweet below yours:
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1520535123804004359?s=21&t=BmlYDZt_6J6HLBeJF6OU2Q
Another Scott
Standing up is an important part of creating a better reality.
(via CharlesPPierce)
[eta:] I’m seeing a lot (around a dozen?) of Ukrainian flag/banners in my NoVA neighborhood.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Another Scott: Also too… Republicans are truly fucking weird and it’s all coming to a head. I mean really going after the Disney Corporation WTFH and just wait till Roe is struck down.. it’ll rally young women I have no doubt having been volunteering for PP of Greater Texas.
CaseyL
@Another Scott: That is very good to see – but national polls are meaningless, because we don’t elect Congress nationally. State polls are more reliable an indicator.
Geminid
@CaseyL: A 10% shift nationwide is significant, and should manifest in battleground districts.
Andrya
@CaseyL: Even state polls must. be treated with caution- many congressional seats are so badly gerrymandered that Democrats can win a majority of the in-state votes but Republicans dominate the congressional delegation.
Geminid
@Ksmiami: Speaking of battleground districts, how’s it looking for Comin Allred in his Dallas area district? Allred flipped that seat in 2018 and I hope we don’t lose him this year.
sdhays
@Ksmiami: I’ve been saying this for the last year and a half. I don’t do predictions, but the idea that you could assume the results of the 2022 elections 2 years out, or even 6 months out when we KNEW that there would be a major gutting of Roe, the January 6 hearings, and COVID all in the mix, just as three huge examples, leaving out the war in Ukraine that we didn’t even know would happen, was absurd. Just lazy ass stupid.
It’s true that the Democrats might not have a good year this year. But reports of their demise have been ridiculously premature.
Geminid
@Andrya: Because of gerrymandering there will probably be less than 40 districts in play this year, maybe fewer. Sharice Davids (KS-3) and Elaine Luria (VA-2) are a couple of a very few Representatives with districts drawn 50-50 Democrat/Republican.
Davids may have caught a break, though, from a court decision striking down a Republican map that would have pulled Democratic voters out of her Kansas City are district. Like Colin Allred of Texas, Davids and Luria flipped red districts in 2018.
James E Powell
And I suppose this, too, is bad news for Biden.
Geminid
@Geminid: Sorry that’s Colin, not Comin, Allred.
Allred is an attorney and former NFL linebacker. Hakeem Jeffries described being in the House chamber with Allred on January 6. The way Jeffries told it, Allred was ready.
@Ksmiami:
Ksmiami
@Geminid: hopefully he’ll do well- he’s very well liked and I’m in his district- life is returning to normal and if inflation ticks down as I expect, he should do fine
Anyway
@Geminid:
What’s the story with the NY redistricting? Are the maps that were supposed to be favorable to Dems still in play?
Geminid
@Ksmiami: That’s good to hear. Virginia’s halting redistricting process moved me from the 5th District to the 7th. If we Democrats work hard enough I’ll have Abigail Spanberger as my new Rep. Spanberger’s another member of the talented House Class of 2018.
Ksmiami
Looking at the MAGA /Trump enabled brain dead hordes, I just always think about Leonard Cohen’s “Waiting for the Miracle to come…” zombie meat puppets bleating nonsense giving their money to charlatan pastors and GOP politicos to try and satisfy some inner void; just pathetic
sab
I’m going to be voting on Tuesday in the primary for a Congressional district that still has undefined boundaries. Weird.
Geminid
@Anyway: Politico put up an article three days ago about the New York court decision. The state’s highest court struck down the Democrats’ gerrymander, and it will appoint a special master to draw a neutral map. Democrats still may gain a sear or two; they’d have gotten more under their proposed plan but they were too greedy and the court put it’s foot down. Primaries have been pushed back to August.
The Politico article on New York redistricting links to reporting for other state too.
Jean
@Geminid: And I’ll lose Spanberger as I will no longer be in the 7th.
Geminid
@sab: The Republicans have been brazen in this matter. I hope it doesn’t mess up Shontel Brown.
Geminid
@Jean: Will you be in the 1st CD now?
sab
@Geminid: I hope so too. I live right on the edge of her district and will probably end up outside of it when they finally decide. Some of my neighbors and my stepdaughter are probably in her district now for the primary but won’t be in the general election.
I hope but don’t expect that enough people will be angry about this whole thing that they will just vote Dem in the fall.
In what will probably be my district the Republicans are a collection of completely inexperienced clowns. They all say that they are qualified because they have lived their whole life in the district. How can rhey say that when they don’t even know where the district boundaries are?