How often does the man who is the prime target of his neighbour’s assassins, has survived numerous plots to kill him, and lives under bombardment, see his family.
The answer for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is “not much”.
But that is also the lot of hundreds of thousands of soldiers in his country and the millions of children who, like his own, go to school, or take courses at home because Vladimir Putin wants them dead too.
“Our children at school, they study and they have to run very quickly to shelters,” Zelensky told The Independent’s World of Trouble podcast in an exclusive interview.
“They have to do it. It doesn’t matter where they study, in the capital or closer to the front line, because the missile is not choosing where to go. They just bring destruction… So that’s why all our children are in danger.”
As a result, Zelensky spends little time with his wife, Olena Zelenska, or his son Kyrylo. The boy has just turned 13, but has spent his entire life living in a country invaded by Russia when he was just a baby. The couple also have a 21-year-old daughter Oleksandra.
Zelensky said he has little time to spend with his family because of his job and rarely visits them because “it is also dangerous”.
They live in a secret location, as does he. But his movements, he knows, are subject to intense scrutiny and spying by Russia’s intelligence services, which have been behind at least 11 plots to kill him.
Along with his family, he was also targeted by Russian special forces and FSB units sent by the Kremlin to, literally, decapitate Ukraine’s leadership, but refused offers from the US to flee into exile and safety.
Now he has to be careful about whoever he visits – even factories and other sites which want a presidential visit rarely get one.
He knows that doing so will make them a target for Russia’s air campaigns, or local proxy attacks involving Ukrainians recruited for money, or by blackmail.
“It is the same for my family – that’s why I try not to go too much to some places,” he told World of Trouble.
Zelensky was elected in 2019 in what may be history’s most vivid example of fact following fiction. In 2015, he created and starred in a TV series called Servant of the People.
Its premise is that a history teacher almost accidentally ended up president of Ukraine after launching an online rant about corruption in the country.
Now Servant of the People is the dominant party in Ukraine’s parliament and a former comedian is the president of a country that, in 2022, was invaded by Vladimir Putin in a full-scale attempt to recolonise its vast resources.
The last four years have aged the president. He arrived for the online interview looking drawn and tired – but soon warmed to topics and used his easygoing style to project good humour and defiance, which have been both his international style and reflect Ukrainian attitudes more widely.
Zelensky rejected the Putin-style association of himself with the state. And ordinary Ukrainians made sure he understood that last year when they marched in protest at his government’s plans to remove the independence of anti-corruption units.
The protests forced a U-turn on the policy, and some of his closest associates have been implicated, indicted, or fled into exile following high-level multimillion-dollar alleged rackets.
Now running a country under martial law, he is legally unable to call another election until a satisfactory peace has been achieved and the parliament lifts the state of emergency.
Would he run again?
“I am not sure that I would,” he told World of Trouble. “Number one, because you can’t be the president whom everybody loves. I understand it. It’s okay. … It’s a pity! But we have to recognise it.
“But I don’t want to be, I don’t want to be the president who is fighting elections but he knows that he's coming last and then uses administrative resources for his campaign”.
He said that in 2019 he did not consult his family about whether to run, believing it to be in the best interests of the country if he did. Now his longer-term priorities have shifted.
“This time, of course, for me, one of the most influential decisions will depend on my family.”
When asked what they had to say about running again, the message to the president appeared very clear: “They say ‘no’.”
