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, 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 that was invaded by Russia when he was 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 who 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.
