He began his career as a comedian, but for many years Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has not been able to afford to reshape smiles. Unless this is a dialectical knife in the ears of his greatest enemy and counterpart, Vladimir Putin. of what the Russian president defined as a “special military operation” that would not last two weeks, Zelensky has proclaimed: “Today marks exactly four years since.”
The president of Ukraine, in a video shared on Telegram, has shown that the Russian Army never fulfilled the plan to secure the Hostomel airport with elite paratrooper troops, nor secure a bridge with which to control the center of the Ukrainian capital. “And this says a lot about our resistance, about how Ukraine has fought all this time,” Zelensky continued, no longer ironic.
At a time when the war has claimed nearly 1.8 million lives, it is difficult to explain to people what victories have been achieved. Zelensky has put the existence of Ukraine at the center of the target: “We have every right to say: we defended our independence, we did not lose our statehood.” Also that “Putin did not achieve his objectives. He did not subdue the Ukrainians, he did not win this war. We preserve Ukraine and will do everything possible to achieve peace and justice.”
Symbolism, the other weapon: memories of a bunker
If, during the first stages of the invasion, the world discovered a leader who did not hesitate to change his tie for a military suit and demonstrate to the citizens that he would be a close leader who would not surrender, much less abandon his country in search of security; a third has not changed four years later. Zelensky has chosen the same Bankova Street bunker in which he was seen during those historic first images.
“We had no other choice. This is our home. We all understood what to do. Our people did not raise the white flag, but rather defended the blue and yellow one,” Zelensky recalls, also recalling that in that underground enclave of the capital he began to do what he has demonstrated how to do best during this time. Gather international support and, with this, weapons and financing for the Ukrainian Army.
“Come with us, support Ukraine. It was inspiring. Very soon, everyone saw the blue and yellow sea, thousands of people with our flags in the squares of Europe and the world,” he recalled of a support that today is in question before a Trump Administration that has converted the US, from a key partner and support of Ukraine, to a creditor of its rare earths and other mining resources or the country that sits down to negotiate with Russia unilaterally without taking into account kyiv’s red lines – do not stay with its territory.
“‘The second army in the world’ fights against apartment buildings and power plants”
Volodymyr Zelensky, on Russia’s attacks on civilians and energy infrastructure
Trump has been invited to visit kyiv, as his predecessor did, but above all to “see with his own eyes” what Moscow has done in his country, remembering that many of the Russian Army’s objectives involve residential buildings or energy infrastructure, in order for them to suffer the harsh Ukrainian winter: “Putin understands that he is not capable of defeating Ukraine on the battlefield and that ‘the second Army in the world’ fights against apartment buildings and energy plants.”
The pain of remembering: “Kramatorsk. The train station. A toy. Mariupol. The theater. The inscription: children”
Finally, Zelensky has not forgotten some of the worst massacres and events that are being investigated as possible crimes against humanity perpetrated by Russia. He did so in an emotional moment of the speech, in which words were superfluous as the memories of civilians shackled with a shot to the head or nerves emerged after learning that a mortar had hit a few meters from a nuclear reactor: “Bucha, Irpin, Borodianka. Mass graves. Gostomel, Mriya, Kharkov, Mikolaiv, the Kajovka dam, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant,” he recalled.
“Kremenchuk and Kryvyi Rog. Ternopil and Lviv. Olenivka. Chasiv Yar. kyiv. Okhmatdit. Kramatorsk. The train station. A toy. Mariupol. The theater. The inscription: children. Odessa. Apartment building. A little girl. Three months. Vilniansk. Motherhood. A baby. Two days,” Zelensky reviewed.
