It is spring in Kyiv, but there’s a cover of snow. It dusts a fat fern tree. A van stands alone, stares at grey buildings, windows with a high cross frame like a just-slipped barricade. And cutting the frame, to the right, are sandbags. “This is what spring looks like,” says President Zelensky, head lifted lightly to the camera. “Spring is harsh.” A cloud slithers behind concrete. Something is running – water from a tap or hose. “But everything will be fine,” he says. “We will win.” A wink. As easy as your dad tossing you a peanut. A wink that says, Of course, we’re bound together.
This video, from 8th March, told us the Russians were wrong again. Zelensky hadn’t abandoned the city. Far from it – he was mining metaphors. There’s the man in the cold: calm, charming, looking fresh, dressed in a hybrid shirt and fleece of the forest-green military. They were wrong 10 days earlier too, when the Russian State Duma Speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, announced he was long gone. “Zelensky hastily fled Kyiv,” Volodin said on Telegram. “He was not in the Ukrainian capital yesterday already. He fled to Lyov with his entourage, where he and his assistants were provided with accommodation.”
