After three military checkpoints, several security screenings, and a walk along long, carpeted corridors past windows blocked with sandbags, the instantly recognisable figure of Volodymyr Zelenskiy materialised, looking particularly slight alongside his bulky security detail.
Dressed in green military trousers and a black T-shirt, Zelenskiy strode across the parquet floor of the grand, ceremonial room inside Kyiv’s presidential compound, and sat down to speak for nearly an hour with a Guardian team, including the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner.
The interview came at perhaps the toughest moment for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Zelenskiy insisted, however, that it was too early to write off the country, and that he remained positive despite all his frustrations. “I’m not in despair at all … I don’t feel like we are on a sinking ship which is going to the bottom. We are not shouting ‘save us’.”
The president is, however, shouting for more urgency. Russia is on the offensive in the Kharkiv region, an advance that came after months of delay in the US Congress over the passing of a major support package, limiting Ukraine’s battlefield capacities. Then, there was the ban on using western weapons to hit Russian military targets across the border, limiting its ability to defend itself.
In the hours after the interview, the US administration finally shifted on that issue, allowing Ukraine to use certain US weapons on targets in the Russian border areas around Kharkiv. It is a permission that may have been more useful three weeks ago, when Ukrainian intelligence could first see Russian troops gathering across the border in preparation for the assault. This sense of decisions being taken long after Ukraine needed them has been a recurring motif of western policy making over the past two years, and one that has caused much frustration.
“The attitude to time is completely different,” Zelenskiy said, becoming animated. “We feel this price more painfully than in the partner countries, because no one in their families has died. And thank God for that. But you don’t know what war is until it comes to your home, to your street. To a friend of yours, someone you studied with, or someone you knew, or someone you loved.”
The president has long experience in trying to bring the visceral reality of war to life for foreign bureaucrats who follow it on maps or in the news. “Sometimes, to understand the price that we are paying, you don’t need just a political will, but also a deeper understanding of the consequences. You have to understand that a day of contemplating, day of decision-making, day of dialogues … takes people’s lives,” he said.
The expressive face, the frequent gesticulations and the intense eye contact all make a powerful impression – it is not difficult to see why international leaders have so often changed their minds after one-on-one meetings with Zelenskiy.
“You say time is money. For us, time is our life,” he said, switching from Ukrainian to English, as he did multiple times during the conversation.
Despite reports that after more than two years of war, exhaustion is taking a toll on the president and his inner circle, Zelenskiy showed little sign of tiredness. As well as the irritation with the speed of western decision-making, there was also sombre reflection and even the occasional flash of mischievous humour that marked his career in a previous life as a successful comic and actor.
It was Zelenskiy’s role as a president in a popular TV comedy series that gave him the domestic fame to propel him to the real presidency in 2019. Since he began work at the presidential administration building five years ago, however, he has had to face far greater ordeals than his on-screen persona ever did: an unwanted starring role in a US impeachment drama, dealing with a global pandemic, and then more than two years of all-out war.
In the early weeks of the fighting, with the Russian army bearing down on Kyiv, the presidential administration compound on Bankova Street was eerily deserted, its long corridors darkened, save for a weak glow from tiny lights placed along the floor. The booms of artillery were audible from the outskirts of the city, and teams of Russian assassins reportedly roamed outside. Zelenskiy and his inner circle worked and lived in the Soviet-built bunker, deep below ground.
These days, some semblance of normality has returned to the building, though it is still obviously the nerve centre of a country at war. The interview took place in a room sometimes used for presenting state awards; chandeliers hung from the ceiling, a tapestry depicting a stylised modernist version of an Orthodox Virgin Mary adorned one wall.
It remains a strange life for Zelenskiy, pacing the corridors of this semi-lit building, surrounded by various layers of protection at all times. His team plan hour to hour, often not knowing what meetings they might have the next day, let alone the next week.
He met the Guardian on Wednesday evening, a few hours after returning from a trip to Spain, Belgium and Portugal, and within 24 hours he was leaving Kyiv again, this time for Sweden.
In recent weeks, Zelenskiy has been occupied with the preparations for a “peace summit” in Switzerland in mid-June, designed to rally a large coalition of countries in support of Ukraine. Kyiv had picked the date to be close to the G7 summit in Italy, making it just a short hop for Joe Biden to attend, but the US president reportedly plans to fly home for a fundraising event in California instead, diminishing the stature of the whole project.
It is another blow in the increasingly tense relationship between Kyiv and Washington, but for all the anger behind closed doors, Zelenskiy knows he has to be careful with public statements about Ukraine’s primary ally. Does he feel let down? “I don’t know what would be the right word to choose here. I think that they need to believe in us more,” he said, diplomatically.
Things could always get worse, of course. A potential victory for Donald Trump in the presidential elections later this year could turn Zelenskiy’s relationship with the US from complicated to outright hostile. “There is no strategy. Not yet. There are just tactical actions,” he said of how he plans to deal with a possible Trump 2.0. Later in the exchange about Trump, he showed one of his occasional flashes of mirth, cackling and wagging his finger at one line of questioning.
Domestically, the most difficult issue for Zelenskiy right now is mobilisation. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians went to the front voluntarily in the early stages of the war, but that supply of personnel has largely been exhausted. Recently, the conscription officers who roam the streets checking men’s documents have become the chief villains of viral TikTok videos, and many men hide indoors to avoid an unwanted encounter that could end with their dispatch to the frontline. Is it possible, or desirable, to make effective soldiers out of unwilling recruits, and what does he say to those men who do not want to fight?
Zelenskiy frowned and became more solemn than at any other point in the interview. First, he restated the problem, telling the story of a Ukrainian woman he had met in Portugal the previous day, who told him how her husband had died at the front, and asked him what would happen now that so few of the patriotic volunteers from the early days of the war remained.
“I told her frankly: ‘We have to do everything to end the war as soon as possible. And I am very sorry that you lost your husband. He is a hero, and he is definitely a hero not only for you but for all of us. But we cannot say that [only] in the beginning there were patriots. Because if there are no [more] patriots on the frontline, then why hasn’t Putin occupied us yet and levelled us completely?’”
He conceded that “after two and a half years of war, of course, this is a slightly different energy”, and said he understood those men who did not want to fight, but in fairness to those already fighting, the mobilisation drive was necessary.
“Sometimes there are cases you’ve mentioned. Some people don’t want to take part in the war. Someone is afraid. And I think that they are human beings. All of us are humans. But you can’t say that now everyone is running away, and before they didn’t run away. No, it is not like that,” he said.
It was a long and thoughtful response, but it left unanswered the difficult question of how much longer Ukraine will be able to fight with an army increasingly made up of mobilised troops rather than willing volunteers.
If Ukraine were not at war, there would have been a presidential election in spring. Instead, Zelenskiy’s term continues. Few in Ukraine or the west believe it would be possible or practical to hold a vote in the current situation, with Russian forces occupying one-fifth of the country and gatherings of people being a frequent target for Moscow’s missiles. The Ukrainian constitution is clear that elections cannot be held during martial law. But if the war drags on for many more months, or years, the question of Zelenskiy’s political legitimacy will raise its head, especially given his administration favours a highly centralised form of governance, prompting criticism from some civil society groups and political opponents as the consensus of the early war months fades.
Zelenskiy said that despite the exhausting routine of leading a country at war, he was determined to see it through. “When you stood for president and said that you will be with your people to the end, and you will always protect Ukraine and the constitution, well, that means you’re a liar if you just put down your hands. And I definitely wouldn’t like to be a liar, especially for my children,” he said.
Asked how he wound down at the end of his long days, he said he often listened to classical music – “Domingo, Pavarotti”. Either that or he read books as a way to turn off his brain before going to sleep. “It’s much more better than to drink,” he said, switching again to English.
Zelenskiy said he had no time for fiction now, and instead mostly turned to history: “A lot of Churchill, Stalin … lot of documents, different documents. Very interesting documents about the cold war,” he said.
Unlike Vladimir Putin, who also likes to dig into the archives, Zelenskiy does not appear interested in using historical documents to make claims about rights to land or to bolster patriotic propaganda points. Instead, he is apparently looking for answers to how historical events affected leaders and society: “A lot of things where you can find the answers on what’s going on with the mentality of people, mentality of the leaders.”
For all that, there was a limit to the extent of the usefulness of historical comparisons, he said. “You know, to be honest, you can’t look for any parallels in wars. All wars end tragically. And even where they talk about victory, there is no victory for the whole country. There are people who have lost everything.
“What is victory for them? For them, victory is the only possibility of satisfaction. It’s the only opportunity for them after they lost loved ones, their husbands. They lost them, but it is not just in vain when your child is going to protect your motherland. They lost them because they believed. They believed that you can protect someone else’s life at the cost of your own life. And it shouldn’t be in vain. Not in vain.”
After the discussion ended, Zelenskiy posed for a portrait, during which he had a sudden flashback. At the beginning of the interview he had been momentarily confused when asked for his thoughts on Keir Starmer, Britain’s likely next prime minister. And who could blame him? Starmer would be the fourth person to lead Britain since the war began in February 2022.
Now, he remembered he had met Starmer, during a visit by the Labour leader to Kyiv last year. “A good guy,” he said, smiling. Then, as if worried he might have inadvertently alienated an ally, he added: “Rishi [Sunak] is also a good guy!”
And then he was gone, disappearing into one of the administration’s long corridors. The next day he was due to make the long journey out of Kyiv once more, another step in his seemingly endless quest to push cautious supporters into making bolder commitments.