OPEN LETTER/ Come to the dialogue and listen to me speak, otherwise I will cut off your scholarships, you will rot in prison. Please!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

Iron doors, sandbags and darkness / "The Times" inside Zelenskyi's bunker: There is no sleep there

2023-02-18 23:42:47Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Iron doors, sandbags and darkness / "The Times" inside
Zelensky

The most striking thing when you enter Bankova, Ukraine's equivalent of Downing Street, is how dark it is inside. Every curtain is closed to protect against bomb blasts and the lights are turned off to reduce the facility's risk of air raids or snipers.

On the day I arrived, Kiev was facing the most intense bombing since the first days of the war. The attack appeared to be the Kremlin's response.

I thought the darkness was a temporary measure due to the recent attack, but I was told it is a permanent detail. As a guard led me along the wide corridors and up the grand staircase, I couldn't even see my feet and could only find my way by the light of his phone.

Bankova, a concrete office block, is surrounded by a steel ring. Checkpoints with armed guards are on every road around the complex, with access only to those with the correct documentation and passport.

Civilian cars cannot approach, and soldiers ask pedestrians for secret passwords that change daily, often gibberish that Russians would have trouble pronouncing.

Earlier that day I was picked up by security officials at one of the checkpoints and taken into a van through many obstacles before entering a courtyard through a number of metal gates. Beyond this is the government district, known as the Triangle. Inside, the windows and doors were covered with sandbags.

Since the beginning of the war, there have been numerous attempts to assassinate Zelensky. Last March, Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine's National Security Council, revealed that Zelensky had survived three assassination attempts in just one week.

Sitting in a waiting room, with only the light of a telephone to illuminate the eerie gloom, I watched the uniformed military advisers who were in and out of the presidential offices.

As the airstrikes sounded for the fourth time that day, no one made a move towards the underground shelter. According to a government official, the bunker had been used only once in recent months, after information was received over the summer that the Russians were planning an attack on the government headquarters.

A military strategist, carrying a large folded map under his arm, emerged from an office where the military cabinet was located. He hurried away down a corridor.

Soon after, a soldier sitting nearby stood up. Others in the room also stood to attention as Zelensky, clearly identifiable by his small stature and black hat emblazoned with the words "I am Ukrainian", walked across the room, followed by a group of advisers.

Andriy Yermak, the president's close friend and top adviser, was among them. He and Zelensky had just returned from their diplomatic mission in Europe, modeled after Winston Churchill's lobbying for America during World War II. Yermak was tired, admitting that it had been "three long days" on the road.

The entire past year has been an endurance test for Zelensky and his officials, who work 18-hour days, seven days a week and often sleep in their dark building. They hardly see their families.

Zelensky, who has an adult daughter and a son, sees them once every ten days. One helper told me that living in the dark away from his wife Olena and children put "a lot of pressure" on him.

I had come to Ukraine after interviewing the president last September. That discussion had taken place on Zoom, but having covered Westminster for almost two decades, I was keen to go to Kiev to find out how a government was able to continue to function under the extreme pressure of war.

Over the course of a week, I spoke with Zelensky's closest advisers about the extraordinary challenges the administration has faced in the 12 months since the Russian invasion.

Yermak, a former lawyer, is the head of the president's office. Although he rarely gives interviews, he agreed to meet me in one of Bankova's waiting rooms.

How was he dealing with the prospect of Putin's spring offensive?

"We know that they are preparing this offensive and we know that it is . . . a difficult situation," he told me.

However, he was keen to stress that the bombing that day, the 14th massive Russian missile attack to target critical infrastructure, would have no effect on Ukrainian resistance.

"This has not changed our positions."

The immediate crisis during my visit was the brutal battle for control of the town of Bakhmut, a small town in eastern Ukraine once home to a thriving salt mining industry and more than 70,000 people.

Today, 6,000 residents remain, surviving mostly underground without power, water or heat. The months-long battle for Bakhmut has claimed hundreds of Ukrainian and Russian casualties per day, according to reports.

Yermak says that Ukraine will never give it up.

"We have it and we protect it. We don't plan to leave."

This week will mark the anniversary of the invasion of Russia. For months, many in Ukraine, including Zelenskyi, had played down the possibility of an invasion, despite repeated warnings from US and British intelligence.

Alexander Rodnyansky, a former academic at Cambridge University who returned home to advise Zelensky on economic policy, was woken at 4am by the sound of rocket attacks in Kiev. He was immediately invited to join Zelensky and other aides in the underground bunker below Bankova. Mykola Solskyi, the minister of agrarian policy and food, told me that the night before the invasion he had sent his family to the relative safety of western Ukraine before returned home to "turn off the phone, because I really wanted to sleep".

By the time Solsky woke up and turned on his phone, Zelensky had declared martial law. Key figures in the Ukrainian government were immediately moved to underground bunkers on orders from the military to remain there until further notice. A Bankova insider said it was a difficult existence: "You don't see the sun, you don't know the time."

He added: If Putin was in his bunker (during the pandemic), then it's no wonder he went crazy. I didn't want to stay there for long.

According to a government source, the original plan was to stay underground for a week. But events outside caused a change of plan. As Russian forces occupied several towns in and around Kiev, it appeared for several weeks that the capital would surely fall as well.

Zelensky and his top aides spent the better part of two months living underground, surfacing intermittently to reassure people that he had not escaped.

Those invited to live alongside the president in the underground bunker had to sign a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting them from sharing any details about the bunker's design, location or amenities. They were not even allowed to talk about the food they ate.

Isolated, the team experienced the war through their iPhones. The president's days were often a series of meetings, interviews and calls with world leaders. Sleep was restless and often disturbed.

Solsky recalls the trauma and terror of those early days, saying: We don't talk about it anymore.

Hours after the invasion, guards inside the secure compound turned off the lights as gun battles erupted around the government quarter and issued bulletproof vests and assault rifles to Zelenskiy and a dozen of his aides. The team within Bankova had to innovate. A key moment was when Zelensky, Yermak and other top advisers emerged from their underground bunker on the second night of the invasion, as Ukrainian forces battled the Russians in nearby streets, to record a 40-second speech to his people .

The late-night video clip recorded on the president's phone was a response to Russian disinformation that he had left the country.

"We are all here," Zelensky said. "We are in Kiev. We defend Ukraine."

The speech galvanized the nation.

"It was very important," Solskiy said in an interview at the agrarian policy ministry, a stark Soviet block near the Maidan Nezalezhnosti metro station, where Zelensky held one of his first impromptu press conferences after the beginning of the war.

Zelensky's determination surprised many. But not Solsky.

"I have seen many times that he is very resilient," he said.

"Stubborn too."

To the surprise of the watching world, Ukraine not only withstood the Russian attack, but began to fight back.

"First, [Russia] underestimated our defense capabilities," said Rodnyansky, a former Cambridge academic.

"Secondly they overestimated their abilities."

Solskiy was open.

"What we understand about the Russians is not to expect any clever plan," he told me.

"They behaved in a clear way."

As Russian troops retreated back to defensive positions in eastern Ukraine and the city of Kiev gradually began to reopen, those inside Bankova were growing weary of life in the underground bunker. One official told me about the night he decided to take his chances and leave the safe bomb shelter to enjoy a meal at a recently reopened restaurant.

In a bad moment, he took a picture of his meal and sent it to a senior Ukrainian MP, who had not yet come out.

The source recalls: He replied 'Where are you' and then a lot of swearing. Then he came to the restaurant, ordered a burger and got food for everyone else and took it back to the bunker.

Although the Russians had withdrawn to the east, Bankova was still in a state of crisis.

"There hasn't been a period of time where we haven't had a complicated situation on the battlefield," said Dasha Zarivna, one of Zelensky's top aides.

"What is very special about the president and his team is that they always set their expectations very high. Even when no one believes. . . they do everything"


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×