After three military checkpoints, several security screenings, and a walk along long, carpeted corridors past windows blocked with sandbags, the instantly recognisable figure of Volodymyr Zelenskiy materialised, looking particularly slight alongside his bulky security detail.
Dressed in green military trousers and a black T-shirt, Zelenskiy strode across the parquet floor of the grand, ceremonial room inside Kyiv’s presidential compound, and sat down to speak for nearly an hour with a Guardian team, including the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner.
The interview came at perhaps the toughest moment for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Zelenskiy insisted, however, that it was too early to write off the country, and that he remained positive despite all his frustrations. “I’m not in despair at all … I don’t feel like we are on a sinking ship which is going to the bottom. We are not shouting ‘save us’.”
