https://www.svd.se/a/340q6e/zelenskyj-kriget-har-aldrat-mig
Zelensky: I was minutes from being murdered
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the war has caused him to age. (NO SHIT, SHERLOCK)
Zelensky says in the interview that the conflict has made him age but that he is set on leading his country through the war.
Times News reporter Simon Shuster has spent about two weeks with Zelensky and his staff inside the presidential building in Kyiv.
Zelensky tells him that he thinks the nights are the worst to get through. How he often lies inside his office and goes through the past day's schedule when he goes to sleep.
It is pointless, says the Ukrainian president.
I see how the day is over. But I look at the schedule several times and feel that something is wrong. It is my conscience that bothers me, he continues.
When the war broke out on February 24, doors and windows in the presidential building were barricaded with everything they could find. Zelenskyj's advisers and friends moved directly towards the building. Several people violated security protocols, including Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, who is second in command and would need to take control of the country if Zelensky was killed.
According to military sources, Russian paratroopers, who were released over Kyiv with the aim of killing or capturing Zelensky and his family, were only minutes away from finding them.
All the knowledge I never wanted has made me age.
The Russian soldiers are said to have made two attempts to storm the facility, says employee Oleksij Arestovych. Zelenskyj's wife and two children must then still have been there. They have since been evacuated.
The first night after the outbreak of the war, weapons and protective equipment were distributed to the president and a dozen of his staff. Only a few of them knew how to handle the weapons, according to the article.
At the same time, offers came from the United States and Britain to bring Zelensky out of the country. The idea was to ensure that the president could set up a government in exile in Ukraine, something that Zelensky refused with the words: I need ammunition, not ammunition.
The US intelligence service considered the statement to be "brave" but also very "risky". That kind of action seems to have been common during the early days of the war, according to the article. Initially, Zelensky refused to take refuge in a bunker outside Kyiv.
Instead, he chose to take to the streets of the capital, where he recorded a video message and told the world that he had stayed in Kyiv to "defend the country's independence." At the same time, the Ukrainian military was fighting the Russian just a block away.
Volodymyr Zelensky says that the brutality of the war has caused him to age.
I have grown older, he says.
All the knowledge I never wanted has made me age. It is a knowledge linked to the number of people who died and the torture carried out by the Russian soldiers. Honestly, it has never been a goal to know about such things, says Zelenskyj.
The president says in the interview that he does not regret that he took the step from the entertainment world to politics three years ago, but states that the country now needs a leader during the war and that this is the role he intends to play.
