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It’s not easy meeting interview requests from thousands of media outlets, so when Volodymyr Zelensky thought of a safe place for a press conference, other than the ultra-protected presidential residence on Bankova Street, he had no choice but to choose the kyiv metro. The last trains had not yet finished passing and the stage at the station was already organized: flags, a hundred chairs, a heavily armed security team and several sets of cameras to improvise a studio that would record his message with television techniques to social media. It was the third time he had left the ministry complex in the center of the capital since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began 67 days ago. The first, in March, went to a nearby trench. The second, in April, to Bucha, 45 minutes from kyiv, to see the traces of the Russian massacre; and the third, on Saturday of last week, to the capital’s metro.
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Since then Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, the United States Secretaries of State and Defense, and António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, have been in kyiv. He received everyone with the military green shirt that is already a symbol of an attitude. Also 67 days ago was the last time he put on his tie. Since then, the face of the country and its government have changed as much as he has. Limited by security problems, but thanks to new technologies, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyhas managed to face the war and solve common problems in record time, such as the operation of the train or the electrical service. “We have learned to work in basements and bunkers”, reveals Anatolii Kutsevol, adviser to the Foreign Minister, in an interview with EL PAÍS.
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Zelensky, 44, has lived since the war broke out away from his two sons, aged 9 and 14, in a complex of buildings where some of the ministries are located and which is practically impossible to approach. Surrounded by military checkpoints and with its windows covered with sacks of earth, the Bankova complex is the headquarters not only of the president, but also of his ministers and inner circle.
Since February 24, when the Russian attack began, the president has focused on the war and everything that surrounds it: the military front, the peace negotiations, the visits by foreign leaders or the processes of association with the European Union. and NATO. Everything else is in the hands of another group of ministers, explains a senior official. In this agenda, Zelensky has two unavoidable daily appointments: the first is the meeting at nine in the morning with his generals on the ground and his security advisers, thanks to the country’s good digitization network. In these meetings, he asks about the fronts, the places where the battle is most intense or where they have given up positions. During the first month, this meeting was held in the basement of the presidential residence, but since the withdrawal of the Russians from kyiv, at the beginning of April, they are held in the boardroom. The second daily appointment is in front of the cameras. Around eleven o’clock at night, practically every day, he records a message in which he intersperses Ukrainian, Russian or English, depending on who he addresses his words to.
The need to communicate
“The Government has been divided between those who are dedicated to solving problems related to the war and those who solve everyday problems such as electricity, public accounts or the operation of trains… But all of them are very clear about the need to communicate”, adds Kutsevol. “It is something that we have learned from the president, because in these circumstances we run the risk that people think that there is no State or that it is dedicated to other things and that is precisely the feeling that we do not want to give. That is why we are at our posts and working harder than ever,” he adds.
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The collaborators consulted by this newspaper say that the president does not have schedules, that he does not separate from his mobile phone, that he gets up before six in the morning, that he has not lost his sense of humor and that a team of advisers participate in his speeches, but that he impregnates all of them with his style. They also say that there is fear of poisoning or that an explosive could end his life. “They don’t even hide that they want to finish us off,” says Igor Zovkva, the president’s adviser for Europe, in an interview with EL PAÍS.
“Terrorist acts can come at any time against the president or any minister.” For an official of his level, there are also no hours of rest and his personal life has disappeared. “The agenda is intense. I give seven or eight interviews a day and you have to prepare the visits of the presidents, deputies from other countries or the speeches in the parliaments. But, as the president says Zelensky: ‘We’ll rest later. Now we have to win a war.”
Until three months ago, Zelensky’s figure was falling in the polls and a couple of slights to the military had removed him from the military institution. His rudeness to two women was famous, who reproached him with little respect for the soldiers who had been fighting since 2014 in the east of the country. But the war has changed everything.
The nights that followed February 24, a group of Russian paratroopers tried to capture him on two occasions, as revealed in an interview with Time magazine. For 48 hours, Zelensky disappeared from circulation and rumors spread through kyiv after several countries offered to evacuate it. The definitive change came in a 33-second video that he posted two days later and in which he appeared along with several collaborators and uttered a phrase that is already part of history: “I need ammunition, not a trip.”
The collaborators who stayed with the president in Bankova are the core of his trusted circle: people from his former production company as a comedian, youtubers or journalists who were unaware of the world of weapons and diplomacy. Among them are Andrii Yermak, 50, the son of a Russian mother and a friend of Zelensky from his time as a film producer, who now works as chief of staff; Oleksii Arestovych, 46, military man and blogger turned one of his military advisers; David Arakhamia, 43 years old, head of the caucus of the party with which he won the elections, Servant of the People; or Myjailo Podolyak, 50 years old, a well-known investigative journalist who has become a leading figure in the peace negotiations with Russia.
With a fresh and informal air, they are responsible for having revolutionized political communication both in form and substance. To the patriotic harangues, which keep the national spirit high, are added harsh and direct messages that do not respond to traditional diplomacy, like the day he told the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that he was not welcome; or when he reminded Pedro Sánchez not to come to kyiv “empty-handed” to take the photo.
For all of them, the pandemic and the country’s good internet connection network have been key. “The covid has helped us to know how to work and resolve remotely. Right now, to keep the state and government action going we just need three things: a phone, wired air-raid shelters and a digital signature,” adds Kutsevol. “Also, Elon Musk’s Starlink network helps us,” he adds. And he assures that the management of the Government must remain in the hands of officials like him and leave the leadership of the war and of the country to Zelensky. “Because he is not just the president of Ukraine, but a global leader,” he concludes.
By Jacobo Garcia, Kyiv
Source: Elcomercio
