In October 2019 the new first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, gave an interview to Ukrainian Vogue.
“I am a nonpublic person,” she told the magazine, “I prefer staying backstage. My husband is always at the forefront, while I feel more comfortable in the shade.”
Punctual, smiley and speaking excellent English, she spoke of her delight in promoting Ukrainian talent, and of how she would use her position to campaign on issues including domestic violence, children’s health and cultural diplomacy. She hoped, she added, that her children could live their lives out of the public eye. Her now 17-year-old daughter, Aleksandra, hoped to be an actress, she said, but her son, Kiril, now nine, “still has a chance to have a normal childhood — to play with other children, to play sport. Let them choose how they want to live.”
Today, Zelenska, 44, is weaponising her 2.6 million followers on Instagram. Her husband, Volodymyr, also 44, has said that he is target No 1 for the Russians, while Olena and their children are target No 2. The family are thought to remain together, at a secret location in Kyiv, with Zelenska posting defiantly on social media.
“I will not have panic and tears,” she wrote on Instagram shortly after the Russian invasion. “I will be calm and confident. My children are looking at me, I will be next to them and next to my husband and with you. I love you! I love Ukraine!”
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She posts pictures of young cancer patients being evacuated for treatment, and of babies being born on bomb shelters. She has accused Russia of the “mass murder of civilians”. “Because of Putin’s attack, Ukrainians have to take their children to basements every night. Ukraine is a peaceful country. We are against the war. But we are not going to give up.”
A friend of Zelenska’s, Ievgen Klopotenko, told a newspaper that until the war most Ukrainians saw her only as the wife of the comedian who was their president. “She is a very shy person,” he added, “but she is also very committed to real change. People didn’t get that about her at first. Ukrainians don’t by nature trust politicians . . . but now they are realising that she is real and that she is like them. Now they’re comparing her to Michelle Obama.”
Zelenska was born Olena Kiyashko in Kryvyi Rih, a former mining town in central Ukraine. She attended the same school as her future husband, who is 12 days older than her, and they had mutual friends. However, they didn’t get to know each other until they started at Kryvyi Rih National University, where she read architecture and he read law. They both joined an amateur dramatics group, and Zelensky has recalled how one day he ran into her on the street and asked to borrow a video she was carrying. He’d already seen the film eight times, but he wanted an excuse to ask for her number. They fell in love, he said, “deeply and irrevocably”, dated for eight years and married in September 2003.
The couple are very different personalities. While her husband is the life and soul of the party and a man with no idea how to relax, she wasn’t the type to tell jokes or push herself forward. He is a “real man”, she has said, who “still gives her butterflies”, and is ”the one you can count on in everything”. Their daughter, Aleksandra, known as Sasha, was born the year after they got married. The family moved to Kyiv, where Zelenska worked as a writer including on scripts for Servant of the People, the 2015 political satire — in which Zelensky played the president of Ukraine — that ran for three seasons. He, meanwhile, built a career as an actor, director and political satirist. He became a household name with a 2008 film, Love in the Big City, and appeared on Ukraine’s first season of Dancing with the Stars. Their son, Kiril, was born in 2013, a year before the Russian invasion of Crimea.
“Volodymyr came home and gazed at our children with sad eyes,” she recalled. “I asked him to calm down; we had to do something about it.’
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When he decided to run for election as president in 2019, she joked that she only found out on social media. She was, however, “not too happy” about it.
“I aggressively opposed the start of this project,” she said, worried that “everything would change, because this is a very difficult move. It’s another direction in life.” However, she supported him fully in his ambition and in April 2019 he won a landslide, with 73 per cent of the vote. From being a below-the-radar wife, mother and writer, Zelenska was now first lady, with 24-hour security. She only ever got privacy, she told Vogue, in the bathroom. She encouraged her husband to walk to work, to help retain some sense of normality, and embraced the opportunities afforded by her new position. She launched an initiative to promote the Ukrainian language and spoke of her role offering emotional support for her husband, “of standing hand in hand with him during official visits, posing for photographers from around the world and not spoiling the picture!”
In October 2020 the couple were photographed at Buckingham Palace meeting the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and Zelenska wore Ukrainian designers when she visited Washington and Paris. She was delighted, she said, when people asked who made her clothes so that she could promote Ukrainian talent. She spoke publicly about the importance of free speech, voiced her support for Ukraine’s Paralympic athletes, and told an American journalist, when she visited Washington, that she wanted to represent Ukraine in a “strong and positive” way.
Today she is looking to the future. She writes of her talks with Lithuania about creating educational and cultural hubs for traumatised Ukrainian children, and her hopes that Turkey might provide shelter for orphans. She has launched a Telegram channel to provide accurate information for Ukrainians, including how to evacuate and how to help the war effort.
“Our country was peaceful, our cities, towns and villages were full of life,” she wrote recently, accusing Russia of the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians. “Now that is shattered. Tell Russian mothers what their sons are doing. Your husbands, brothers, compatriots kill children just like yours.”
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At the end of January, as Russia massed troops and tanks on the border, she posted a picture of Zelensky to celebrate his birthday.
“I’m sure you’re looking at me in this picture,” she wrote, “because you always look at me like that. I wish every woman had such looks. Only those who truly love look like that. As long as you look like that, I’m not afraid of anything. We still have things ahead of us. So take care of yourself. We have to realise everything we dream of together. Happy birthday, my love.”
