Faced with her husband’s desire to run for the presidency of Ukraine, taking the role he played as a comedian on TV into real life, Olena Zelenska was against it. “I wasn’t happy with the plans. I realized how everything was going to change and the difficulties we were going to face,” she told Vogue magazine in an interview in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky’s first year in office. “But I said I would always support you.”
Three years later, with the country under attack by Russian troops, Olena took that support to a much higher level. According to Zelensky, she and her children are still in Ukraine, despite being “the enemy’s number two target” – he is number one, as he said in a televised speech last Thursday (24), the first day of the attack led by Vladimir Putin to the territory of the neighboring country.
“They want to politically destroy Ukraine by destroying the head of state,” Zelensky said. “I will remain in the capital. My family is also in Ukraine. My children are in Ukraine. My family is not a traitor, they are citizens of Ukraine,” he continued, referring to Aleksandra, 17, and Kiril, 9.
Screenwriter and founder of Ukraine’s largest audiovisual studio, Olena, who has just turned 44, has embraced the aura of heroism that the West has bestowed on Zelensky in the conflict. On Friday (25), in a post with a photo of the Ukrainian flag on her account of more than 2 million followers on Instagram, she addressed the population, saying that “she sees everyone on TV, on the streets, on the internet. “.
“You are amazing. I am proud to live in the same country as you… Today I will not have panic or tears. I will be calm and confident. My children are looking at me, I will be close to them and close to my husband and with you. I love you! I love Ukraine.”
Two days later, she posted a photo of a baby born in a bomb-proof bunker in Kiev, praising the doctors and the people who help to care for her. “We are the Army, and the Army is us. And children born in bomb shelters will live in a peaceful country that has defended itself.” This Tuesday (1st), Olena published a tribute to the women who fight on the front.
Olena married Zelensky in 2003 — when she was given her husband’s surname, with the feminine variation, Zelenska, as in Slavic languages. They are from the same city, Krivi Rih, in the central region of the country, where Russian is the predominant language, and they were schoolmates, but became close at university, when he was studying law and she, architecture, which she exchanged for a writing career. .
One of the founders of Studio Kvartal 95, which produces series, movies and entertainment shows, she wrote scripts for comedy shows and movies. She told Vogue that she always preferred backstage, with her husband appearing “in the foreground”. “I’m more comfortable in the shade. I’m not into parties, I don’t like to tell jokes,” she said. “I’m a non-public person. But the new realities demand their own rules, and I’m trying to stick to them.”
In fact, she accompanied her husband to campaign engagements, posing for pictures alongside him. After the election victory, pulled by the anti-political wave that led voters to prefer an outsider, he said that he continued to write screenplays, but also followed the script of other first ladies around the world, taking up social causes linked to children’s health, gender equality and cultural diplomacy.
Olena has worked on programs aimed at improving student nutrition, combating domestic violence and spreading the Ukrainian language abroad, with the introduction of Ukrainian language audio guides in museums around the world, for example. She also supports the country’s Paralympic athletes. The first lady’s cultural diplomacy includes wearing clothes by Ukrainian designers and promoting them when asked by the Western press what her brand of looks is – something she says happens often.
The couple does not usually publicly expose their children, although the eldest, whose nickname is Sasha, has already acted in a few films. Olena Zelenska doesn’t have much of a choice. Since the beginning of the war, her Instagram profile has gained almost 300,000 followers, and interest in the first lady in Google searches, according to the Trends tool, has grown 900% in the last week compared to the previous one.
The whereabouts of her and her children, however, are a state secret. “Where exactly they are I have no right to say,” said the president, in the speech in which he said they would not abandon the country.
Who is Volodymyr Zelensky?
Like his wife, Volodymyr Zelensky is also 44 years old. He was elected leader of the country after becoming famous playing a Ukrainian president in a TV series.
A Jew, he reacted to Putin’s accusations that Ukraine is now ruled by a gang of neo-Nazis and claimed that three of his great-uncles were killed in the Holocaust. “How could I be a Nazi? Tell that to my grandfather, who spent the entire war in the infantry of the Soviet army and died as a colonel in independent Ukraine,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.
With no political experience before running, Zelensky borrowed several of the characteristics of the comedy series that propelled him to stardom — in which he plays a history professor who goes viral on the internet with a video in which he vents against corruption and ends up elected president of the parents.
In real life, he gave the same name as the TV show to his party, Servo do Povo, and had in the fight against corruption his main proposal — or only one, since one of the campaign mottos, in a joking tone, was that “those who don’t have promises don’t disappoint”.
In the midst of an anti-political wave and with an almost entirely internet campaign, the then-president Petro Porochenko, who was seeking a second term, won with 73% of the votes in the second round.
Zelensky inherited a civil war in the east of his country, an economy collapsed by the dispute and the conflict over Crimea, which had been annexed by Russia in 2014 in reaction to the Ukrainian uprising that, in the same year, removed a pro-Moscow government from power.
Minutes after taking office as president, he dissolved Parliament, an expedient foreseen for the country’s leaders, and called for legislative elections in the hope of consolidating his power – he, in fact, obtained a majority of seats in the House. In charge of the country, he put among his fellow advisers from his comedy company Kvartal 95, the same company that made him famous before entering politics.
Even though he promised to negotiate with Russia to resolve conflicts in the east, he made it clear that his government placed Ukraine closer to the West than to Moscow.
