Zelensky has been widely praised for his response to the invasion 65 days after the first Russian troops entered Ukraine. He has spoken to the US Congress, the World Bank and the Grammy Awards. Boris Johnson is among the top people who want to see in his company. But his time as leader of a country attacked by a much more powerful neighbor could have ended within hours of the invasion, according to interviews with Time magazine. Speaking to journalist Simon Shuster, who spent a fortnight at the presidential compound in Kyiv, Zelenskiy described how Russian troops came close to finding him and his family as they tried to seize the capital’s government district on the first day of the conflict. While many of his memories of those early hours remained “fragmented”, Zelensky said the dawn of February 24 stood out. After the bombing began, he and his wife, Olena Zelenska, went to tell their 17-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son to prepare to leave home. “We woke them up,” Zelensky told Time. “It simply came to our notice then. “There were explosions there.” The Ukrainian army told Zelensky that Russian strike groups had parachuted into Kyiv to kill or arrest him and his family. “Before that night, we had only seen such things in the movies,” Andriy Yermak, his chief of staff, told the magazine. Ammunition erupted around the government district as night fell on the first day of the war, Schuster wrote. “The guards inside the compound turned off the lights and brought bulletproof vests and rifles for Zelensky and about a dozen of his assistants.” One of the few officials who knew how to use weapons was Oleksiy Arestovych, a veteran of Ukraine’s military intelligence service. “It was an absolute madhouse,” Arestovic told Time. “Automatically for everyone.” Russian troops made two attempts to invade the compound while Zelensky’s family was still inside, according to Schuster. The next night, after rejecting offers of a safer environment – including an evacuation by US and British forces that would allow him to form an exiled government – Zelensky went out into the courtyard to record a famous video message on the phone. of. At that moment, Zelensky said that he really realized his role in the war. “You understand they are watching,” he told the magazine. “You are a symbol. “You have to act as the head of state should.”
