by Andrea Marinelli and Guido Olimpio
President of Ukraine reconstructs first day of invasion. In those hours, the history of the conflict was decided: the Ukrainian government did not flee, but defended its territory thanks to Western supplies, while Russian plans for a quick conquest of the country failed
On February 24, in the early hours of the invasion, Russian soldiers almost captured Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his family. President of Ukraine himself to relive these exciting moments – even if the memories are fragmentary, he warns, an incoherent series of sounds and images – in a long interview with the American magazine Time, which accompanied him for a week together with his closest collaborators . Just two days earlier, as confirmed to Corriere by Estonian President Alar Karis, who visited Kyiv on February 22, Zelenskyy did not yet believe in a full-scale Russian invasion: despite warnings from Washington, he believed that Putin’s army would have done it focused at most on the disputed areas of Donbass.
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Instead, before dawn that morning, the President of Ukraine and his wife Olena Zelenska rushed to their children – aged 17 and 9 – to warn them that the war had started and they had to flee. We woke them up, Zelensky recalls. The explosions could be heard loudly. At the same time, the President was informed by the Ukrainian army that Russian elite troops had parachuted into Kyiv to capture him and his family.
Before this evening, we would only have seen such things in the cinema, said Andriy Yermak, the president’s chief of staff, who, like Zelenskyy, who both worked for the Inter TV channel, and many of his associates, came from the entertainment industry. While Ukrainian troops tried to repel the Russian attack on the capital, the Presidential Guards in Kyiv attempted to secure the government complex on Bankova Street, blocking the back gate with police barriers, sheets of plywood and anything else they could find. Meanwhile, all of the president’s allies arrived at the compound, some with their families: among them was Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the parliament, who should have succeeded Zelenskyy if he had been killed, but who infringed presented the security protocol at the Presidential Palace and then took part in the vote by which the assembly declared martial law in Ukraine.
In the late afternoon, after Zelenskyy signed the decree, shootings began around the government district. The Presidential Guard turned off all the lights on the presidential compound, provided everyone present with bulletproof vests, and brought assault rifles to Zelenskyy and a dozen of his assistants—most of whom didn’t even know how to hold them. It looked like an asylum, there were automatic rifles for everyone, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych, who, as a veteran of military intelligence, was one of the few who knew how to use it, told Time. Outside, meanwhile, the battle was fast approaching and the Russians tried to break into the presidential palace, being repelled twice: along with Zelensky — as he himself confirmed to Time’s Simon Shuster — were his wife and two children.
At that moment, the United States and Britain offered to evacuate the president, perhaps to form a government-in-exile in eastern Poland, but the proposal, coming through a secure link with Washington, was not even considered. I need ammunition, not an elevator, Zelenskyi is said to have replied, although these words were not confirmed by anyone. Whether he uttered them or not, at any rate at this point the story of the conflict was decided: the Ukrainian government did not flee, but defended its territory thanks to Western supplies, while Russian plans for a quick conquest of the country shattered. . We thought he was brave, an American official who knew the facts but was also very risky, Time said.
Zelenskyy’s bodyguards thought so too, says the American magazine, which asked him to leave the presidential palace immediately. It was too exposed, we didn’t even have concrete blocks to close the road, Councilor Arestovych recalls. In fact, in a densely populated area of Kyiv, the buildings of the presidential complex stand close enough, surrounded by civilian buildings that could be used by Russian snipers, for a shell thrown from across the street to hit the windows. Outside the city, however, a bunker was waiting for him, which could protect him even during a long siege: Zelenskyy, in turn, refused to be transferred.
In the past few hours, the airborne troops sent to behead the Ukrainian government landed at Hostomel Airport, 35 kilometers from the presidential complex on Via Bankova. Waiting for them, they found the Ukrainians: as we reported earlier, the CIA informed the Ukrainians about the Russian plans and provided accurate information about the direction of the attack. In fact, thanks to internal sources and satellite images, Washington knew that the army would try to seize the airport in order to create a bridgehead and encourage the flow of reinforcements by plane. Opening a breach probably had to contribute to the movements of a fifth column made up of collaborators who should have favored the president’s elimination.
The resistance was prepared, the battle was bloody and the Russians who fell into the trap suffered their first heavy casualties in elite units. According to the Ukrainians, said Lorenzo Cremonesi, Corriere’s Kyiv correspondent at the time, three Ilyushin II-76 transport planes were shot down long before they approached the Hostomel landing field, where one of Italy’s most decisive battles took place. War: Each plane had about 150 men on board and in a few seconds Putin would have lost almost 500 of his best fighters. However, some observers have scaled these losses down and (perhaps) reduced the destroyed cargo to just one. In the same hours, an armored column trying to reach Chernobyl airport would have been annihilated: part of these details, collected on the spot, return to the stories told by CIA officials to American journalists.
Having refused the American way out and moving to the bunker outside the city, Zelenskyy had already become a symbol of the Ukrainian resistance: a president not particularly popular in peacetime, in 24 hours he became the commander whom he followed to war. . The next night, while fighting was still going on in the streets, the Ukrainian leader left the compound to record the famous video in central Kyiv, surrounded by his collaborators. We’re all here, he said, appealing to his officers present, all dressed in army T-shirts and jackets that were to become wartime uniform. Let’s defend our independence, our country.
In these first 48 hours of the war, the presidential comedian found the communicative figure with whom he managed to dictate the line for more than two months: Ukrainian propaganda was always one step ahead of Russian, Kyiv hammered hard and constantly helped with the West and prevent the rest of the world from forgetting the conflict. You know they’re watching you, he told Time himself. You’re an icon, and you have to do what a head of state has to do.
At this point, as Francesco Verderami said in Corriere, a triple defensive belt was built around Zelensky. The first is that of his men, who have an obsessive attention to food, water, medicines, bedding and sheets, which the President uses to protect him from poisoning. The second and third are an Anglo-American co-production, intelligence sources have explained: one physicist positioned on the ground at a safe distance, another removed. The security device uses satellites and electronic instruments ready to blind any communications classified as hostile, while the rest contributes the intelligence from European agencies.
The CIA itself described the cooperation with the Kiev secret service as revolutionary, a partly public exchange of information about which much has been written, but which is enriched with new details every day. In fact, a long article published by Nbc in the last few days confirmed that American intelligence agencies are helping to keep Zelensky safe, proposing how to protect his movements, trying to prevent his location, probably using electronic devices to prevent, that his conversations and his movements are being monitored.
Zelenskyy is classified as a high risk by the Allies, Verderami repeatedly wrote, although some solutions to the attack, such as bombing his bunker, are considered difficult: the Russians are far from Kyiv and any air mission would not come as a surprise. In the same way, the launch of rockets would be intercepted by the satellites in time: however, these are not perfect mechanisms, you can never count on full shielding. If Putin wanted less NATO with the war, he had more, commented Italian Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini. When she backed a divided Europe, she consolidated it. When he thought about eliminating Zelensky, he made him a hero.
April 29, 2022 (Change April 29, 2022 | 13:27)
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