'We will wait for them always': Olena Zelenska on Ukraine's wartime children
Ukraine's First Lady has said her country needs more help from Western allies and described the suffering of children growing up during the war, ITV News International Editor Emma Murphy reports
The First Lady of Ukraine doesn’t want to get into the politics of war.
In public at least Olena Zelenska's focus is its human consequences and the generation of children whose childhoods will be forever changed by it.
However the two are inextricably linked and as we meet in the Office of the President in Kyiv, a continent away in another capital the meeting of two others will potentially determine a new phase in that war and therefore those childhoods.
I ask how she felt about the meeting between British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden, which could lead to Ukraine’s military being able to strike deep into Russia with western supplied missiles.
“I think this question is more for the president and our military, political administration,” she tells me. “Of course we hope for support, we hope it will increase because what we have now is not enough, I, in my place, can only hope.”
She has many hopes, personal and professional. Again both are inextricably linked. She became First Lady in a time of peace, she is now a wartime First Lady.
That dominates every part of her life.
Ukraine has now been at war since 2022. In that time six million Ukrainians have left the country, over three million are internally displaced.
“The war must stop,” she tells me. “The war is hanging over all aspects of children’s lives, starting with constant fear and unpredictability of what happens tomorrow. Family ties are being broken, people are separated, kids don’t see their relatives and often not even their parents. We have a whole generation of small children who have never seen their teachers or classmates in person as they are always online."
How to minimise the long-term impact on society is part of her work.
“In our tumultuous life we cannot be sure of anything but we need to make sure this terrible experience for our children will not break their lives forever,” the First Lady says.
When war broke out six million people left, including two million children.
They remain abroad, “ambassadors for Ukraine” according to the woman who would like one day for them to return.
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She has a message for those for whom home is now a distant memory and return a distant hope.
“I am sure that all of us are dreaming it will happen and we hope and are sure it will happen, we want it sooner [rather] than later. I will tell them that we love them, not to forget they are Ukrainian kids and we will be waiting for them always.”
The global response to Ukraine’s situation is something the First Lady is seeking to harness, in part through her Summit of First Ladies and First Gentlemen.
This week political spouses from around the world joined her in Kyiv to discuss child protection. The summit is now in its fourth year.
“Too often we were seen as just the person who accompanies, the plus one in diplomatic protocols and actually that is not fair because each of us has projects, missions and activities in humanitarian and social spheres in our countries, and in general when we get united we can do more,” she says.
“Education, healthcare, child protection and mental health are factors which influence economics, politics and geo-politics.
"That’s why we should not forget about seemingly soft things, which are becoming more complicated and are the basis of life for ordinary people,” she says.
What happens for her family after the war is as confusing as it is for every other family in this country.
“We are not living a normal life right now and I am not going to plan my future in such a situation and I won’t do it. But we are not cancelling the future, we hope and dream and all our dreams [are] based on living in a peaceful country.”
Like the rest of the country, the First Lady is unable to predict when that dreamed-of peace will return.
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