‘My country was peaceful’: Ukraine’s first lady describes ‘impossible’ destruction of war

First lady accuses Russia of targeting civilians

It is “impossible” to convey the scale of destruction and disbelief over the last week in Ukraine, according to an impassioned letter posted by Olena Zelenskaya, the country’s first lady.

“It was impossible to believe what happened a little over a week ago. My country was peaceful, and cities, towns, and villages were full of ordinary life,” she wrote in Ukrainian on Instagram on Tuesday. “On February 24, we woke up with the announcement of the start of the war. Tanks crossed the Ukrainian border, planes burst into our space. Cities were surrounded by missile launchers.”

The worst part of the conflict, according to Ms Zelenskaya, has been its impact on children, an aspect of the invasion that has been papered over by what she called “Kremlin propagandists”.

“The worst thing is to read about child victims,” she went on. “About eight-year-old Alice, who died on Okhtyrka Street – her grandfather tried to cover her with his body. Or about Polina from Kyiv, who died from the shelling together with her parents. About 14-year-old Arseniy ... In the once peaceful suburb of the capital, a fragment hit the boy in the head, and the ambulance simply could not reach him under fire.”

She urged that the world understand what’s going on in Ukraine is far beyond the “special operation” Russian president Vladimir Putin has described to his people.

“Despite assurances from Kremlin-backed propaganda outlets, who call this a ‘special operation’ - it is, in fact, the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians,” she wrote.

The conflict has sent roughly 1.7 million Ukrainians fleeing from the country, including young cancer patients, as The Independent’s Kim Sengupta has reported from Kyiv.

Olena Zelenskaya (Getty Images)

As the conflict rages on, both the first lady, a former screenwriter, and the president, a former TV comedian, have both been praised for using social media to rally Ukrainians and the rest of the world behind their cause.

The war in Ukraine, meanwhile, shows few signs of abating, though Russia has promised to allow five humanitarian corridors to be formed to let people flee major cities under attack by Vladimir Putin’s forces.

Russia will temporarily cease fire on 7am GMT (10am Moscow time) on Wednesday, Russian news agency Tass cited a senior Kremlin official as saying, allowing civilians to flee the hard-hit cities of  Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Mariupol.

(PA Graphics) (PA Graphics)

Despite calls from Ukraine for more defence support from the US, the Pentagon has nixed a plan to provide fighter jets to the country via a multi-step handoff with Poland.

“The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America’ departing from a US/NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance,” tweeted Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.