President Zelensky's wife has opened up about life under Russian siege and exposed what she believes Vladimir Putin's "fatal mistake" was when he invaded their country.
While they have caused thousands of deaths and immeasurable destruction in Ukraine, Russia's forces have failed to capture most of the nation's major cities since launching their attack in February.
Now, the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, has given her take on why Putin's invasion was always doomed to fail in an exclusive interview with Vogue.
When asked about how she balanced concern for her family with concern for the country as a whole, Zelenska responded by saying that for her, the personal and the public were indistinguishable.
"The war immediately combined the personal and public. And this is probably the fatal mistake of the tyrant who attacked us. We are all Ukrainians first, and then everything else," she told Vogue.
The first lady went on to explain that Putin's attempts to sow internal division in Ukraine were futile. "He wanted to divide us, to shatter us, to provoke internal confrontation, but it is impossible to do this with Ukrainians. When one of us is tortured, raped, or killed, we feel that we all are being tortured, raped, or killed."
"We do not need propaganda to feel civic consciousness, and to resist. It is this personal anger and pain, which we all feel, that instantly activates the thirst to act, to resist aggression, to defend our freedom," she added.
Elsewhere in the interview, Zelenska recalled the moment the invasion began on February 24, when she was awoken by an explosion in the early hours of the morning.
"My husband wasn’t in bed. But when I got up, I saw him at once, already dressed, in a suit as usual (this was the last time I’d see him in a suit and a white shirt – from then on it was military). 'It started.' That’s all he said," she said.
Though she had hoped to remain by Zelensky's side, the first lady and her two children were forced to relocate to a safer facility, from which she has watched the horrors of the war unfold.
Towards the end of the interview, Zelenska reiterated her husband's request for a no-fly zone, saying: "The democratic world must be united and give a tough response, thus showing that in the 21st century there is no place for killing civilians and encroaching on foreign territory."
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