8 Tuesday March 15 2022 | the times
times2
are very different
personalities. While
her husband
is the life and soul of
the party and a man
with no idea how to
relax, she wasn’t the type to tell jokes
or push herself forward. He is a “real
man”, she has said, who “still gives
her butterflies”, and is “the one you can
count on in everything”.
Their daughter, Aleksandra, known
as Sasha, was born the year after they
married. The family moved to Kyiv,
where Zelenska worked as a writer
including on scripts for the 2015
political satire Servant of the People —
in which Zelensky played the president
of Ukraine — that ran for three
seasons. He, meanwhile, built a career
as an actor, director and political
satirist. He became a household name
with a 2008 film, Love in the Big City,
and appeared on Ukraine’s first season
of Dancing with the Stars. Their son,
Kiril, was born in 2013, a year before
the Russian invasion of Crimea.
“Volodymyr came home and gazed
at our children with sad eyes,” sheUkraine’s shy first lady steps up
Once a reluctant
politician’s wife,
Olena Zelenska
has weaponised
her social media
to powerful effect.
By Hilary Rose
I
n October 2019 the new first
lady of Ukraine, Olena
Zelenska, gave an interview
to Ukrainian Vogue. “I am a
nonpublic person,” she told the
magazine, “I prefer staying
backstage. My husband is always
at the forefront, while I feel
more comfortable in the shade.”
Punctual, smiley and speaking
excellent English, she spoke of her
delight in promoting Ukrainian talent,
and of how she would use her position
to campaign on issues including
domestic violence, children’s health
and cultural diplomacy. She hoped,
she added, that her children could
live their lives out of the public eye.
Her now 17-year-old daughter,
Aleksandra, hoped to be an actress,
she said, but her son, Kiril, now nine,
“still has a chance to have a normal
childhood — to play with
other children, to play sport.
Let them choose how they
want to live.”
Today, Zelenska, 44, is
weaponising her 2.6 million
followers on Instagram. Her
husband, Volodymyr, also
44 , has said that he is target
No 1 for the Russians, while
Olena and their children are
target No 2. The family are
thought to remain together,
at a secret location in Kyiv,
with Zelenska posting defiantly
on social media.
“I will not have panic and
tears,” she wrote on Instagram
shortly after the Russian
invasion. “I will be calm and
confident. My children are
looking at me, I will be next
to them and next to my
husband and with you. I love
you! I love Ukraine!”
She posts pictures of young
cancer patients being evacuated
for treatment, and of babies being
born in bomb shelters. She has
accused Russia of the “mass murder
of civilians”.
“Because of Putin’s attack,
Ukrainians have to take their children
to basements every night. Ukraine is
a peaceful country. We are against the
war. But we are not going to give up.”
A friend of Zelenska’s, Ievgen
Klopotenko, told a newspaper that
until the war most Ukrainians saw
her only as the wife of the comedian
who was their president. “She is a very
shy person,” he added, “but she is
also very committed to real change.
People didn’t get that about her at
first. Ukrainians don’t by nature
trust politicians... but now they
are realising that she is real and
recalled. “I asked him to calm down.
We had to do something about it.”
When he decided to run for election
as president in 2019, she joked that
she only found out on social media.
She was, however, “not too happy”
about it.
“I aggressively opposed the start
of this project,” she said, worried that
“everything would change, because
this is a very difficult move. It’s
another direction in life.” However,
she supported him fully in his
ambition and in April 2019 he won a
landslide, with 73 per cent of the vote.
From being a below-the-radar wife,
mother and writer, Zelenska was now
first lady, with 24-hour security. She
only ever got privacy, she told Vogue,
in the bathroom. She encouraged
her husband to walk to work, to help
retain some sense of normality, and
embraced the opportunities afforded
by her new position. She launched an
initiative to promote the Ukrainian
language and spoke of her role
offering emotional support for her
husband, “of standing hand in hand
with him during official visits, posing
for photographers from around the
world and not spoiling the picture!”
In October 2020 the couple were
photographed at Buckingham Palace
meeting the Duke and Duchess of
Cambridge, and Zelenska wore outfits
by Ukrainian designers when she
visited Washington and Paris. She was
delighted, she said, when people asked
who made her clothes so that she
could promote Ukrainian talent.
She spoke publicly about the
importance of free speech, voiced her
support for Ukraine’s Paralympic
athletes and told an American
journalist, when she visited
Washington, that she wanted to
represent Ukraine in a
“strong and positive” way.
Today she is looking to the
future. She writes of
her talks with Lithuania
about creating educational
and cultural hubs for
traumatised Ukrainian
children, and her hopes
that Turkey might provide
shelter for orphans. She
has launched a Telegram
channel to provide
accurate information for
Ukrainians, including how
to evacuate and how to help
the war effort.
“Our country was peaceful, our
cities, towns and villages were
full of life,” she wrote recently. “Now
that is shattered. Tell Russian mothers
what their sons are doing. Your
husbands, brothers, compatriots kill
children just like yours.”
At the end of January, as Russia
massed troops and tanks on the
border, she posted a picture of
Zelensky to celebrate his birthday.
“I’m sure you’re looking at me in
this picture,” she wrote, “because you
always look at me like that. I wish
every woman had such looks. Only
those who truly love look like that.
As long as you look like that, I’m
not afraid of anything. We still have
things ahead of us. So take care of
yourself. We have to realise
everything we dream of together.
Happy birthday, my love.”OLENA ZELENSKA/INSTAGRAM; ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGESthat she is like them. Now they’re
comparing her to Michelle Obama.”
Zelenska was born Olena Kiyashko
in Kryvyi Rih, a former mining town
in central Ukraine. She attended the
same school as her future husband,
who is 12 days older than her, and
they had mutual friends. However,
they didn’t get to know each other
until they started at Kryvyi Rih
National University, where she read
architecture and he read law. They
both joined an amateur dramatics
group, and Zelensky has recalled how
one day he ran into her on the street
and asked to borrow a video she was
carrying. He’d already seen the film
eight times, but he wanted an excuse
to ask for her number.
They fell in love, he said, “deeply and
irrevocably”, dated for eight years and
married in September 2003. The coupleTop: Olena Zelenska
and Volodymyr
Zelensky. Above:
marking Independence
Day in Kyiv on August
24, 2020 and, left, with
their childrenUkrainians
realise that
she is real
and that
she is like
them