Olena Zelenska: from screenwriter to Ukraine’s first lady

“My husband knows how to surprise,” she quipped, adding that “we had been discussing this issue for a long time, and I said that I would always support him”.

True to her word, “when the time came for him to campaign, Olena dutifully appeared by his side for photo ops and campaign speeches”, said the Daily Mail. 

‘Non-public person’

In the three years since Zelenskyy’s landslide election victory, Zelenska has accompanied him on a string of international engagements, visiting countries including France and Turkey. In October 2020, the couple met Prince William and Kate Middleton at Buckingham Palace, during a two-day official visit to the UK.

The Ukrainian president and first lady with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at Buckingham Palace in 2020

Jonathan Brady/WPA Pool/Getty Images

Zelenska has also steered her own course in public life, however, despite being uncomfortable in the spotlight. “I am a non-public person,” she told Vogue shortly after becoming first lady.

“But the new realities require their own rules, and I’m trying to comply with them,” added Zelenska, who appeared on the cover of the fashion magazine. 

She revealed that one of her ambitions in her then new role was to reform school nutrition. “The sooner children are educated to eat healthy, the easier it is to explain later that broccoli is better than sausage,” she said. 

Zelenska has also spearheaded the launch of dozens of shelters for domestic violence victims and has promoted the Ukrainian Women’s Congress, which works towards gender equality.

Change of focus

The Russian invasion has forced Ukraine’s first lady “into a new position”, said The New York Times. She is now using her platform to “raise awareness of crimes against children and the elderly, and reaching out beyond her country’s borders to call for help”. 

For security reasons, the current location of Zelenska and her two children with the president – 17-year-old Oleksandra and nine-year-old Kyrylo – is unknown. Zelenskyy told Channel 4 News on 2 March that he had only seen his family once since the conflict began.

But the first lady has been raising public morale through regular posts on social media.

“I will not have panic and tears,” Zelenska wrote to her 2.5m Instagram followers shortly after Vladimir Putin launched the Russian invasion, on 24 February. “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.”

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/europe/956035/olena-zelenska-volodymyr-zelenskyy-wife