Volodymyr Zelensky, a resident of a village in the Donetsk region, criticized on Thursday (27) the conduct of the conflict with Russia headed by his namesake, the president of Ukraine. For Zelenski, a retired military man —who, despite his name, has no known relationship with the president—, his namesake is responsible for extending the conflict.
The retiree recalls the enthusiasm he felt when he voted for Zelensky, but, after a few years in power, he says he doesn’t see the changes he believed the former commander would bring. Above all, he says he feels disappointed because the president, according to him, refuses to end the war.
“He said he would only negotiate with the next president of Russia. But if Putin stays in power for another ten years, will we have ten years of war? People can’t stand it any longer,” he said.
In late April, when Russian soldiers knocked on his door in a small occupied village in eastern Ukraine to verify the identity of survivors, Volodymyr Zelensky, the retiree, feared what might happen.
The Russian soldier who checked his passport burst out laughing: “That’s it folks, the war is over, we can go home! We’ve got the president!” he exclaimed, according to the leader’s namesake.
He then held his breath when the soldier wanted to take his document as a souvenir. “I said to him: ‘What memory? I can’t live without my passport!”, he said, explaining that he managed to get them to return it.
Born in 1958 in Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union, to a mother working in coal mines and a working father, the Ukrainian retiree was a driver for the Soviet Army and a construction worker. He has spent the last eight months of war and bombing hiding in a basement. “I had quit smoking and obviously I’m back to smoking,” he lamented.
In her small house with floral wallpaper, but plunged into darkness and cold, the wind generated by an explosion shakes the plastic tarpaulin covering the window. His village, liberated on September 30 by Ukrainian forces, is now the target of Russian artillery.
Valentina Zelenska, his wife, had left at the beginning of the war, but her husband didn’t want to leave the house – the lifelong dream he finished paying off in 2003, with a porch, barbecue and the pond where he used to fish for carp. .
In the family album, he shows a photo of himself as a young man, dressed in military uniform. “I don’t think I’m anything like the president at all,” he said.
“You do look alike!” exclaimed Valentina, sitting on a stool across the room. The couple was supposed to celebrate 22 years of marriage, but in the village devastated by the fighting, there were no more flowers.
Zelenska claims that both her husband’s first and last name are quite common in Ukraine, as well as Russia, but she doesn’t know any other namesake besides the president-elect in 2019.
Like many residents of his generation in Ukrainian Donbass, the retired Zelensky considers Ukraine his homeland. However, this former Soviet soldier does not hide a certain nostalgia for the socialist regime, which he claims brought peace and prosperity to his generation.
“Presidents pass and we ordinary people stay,” he said.
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