TIME magazine’s new cover story takes readers inside the world of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as he leads his country amid the devastating war with Russia.
The cover photo is a black-and-white side profile of Volodymyr Zelensky, with the text: "How Zelensky leads: Inside the compound with the president and his team".
TIME magazine reporter Simon Schuster visited the presidential compound outside Zelensky's office in Kyiv, where he sleeps sometimes.
Schuster reported that Zelensky looked at his agenda even after his day was over and stayed awake thinking about what he could have possibly missed.
“It’s the same agenda. I see it’s over for today. But I look at it several times and sense that something is wrong," he told the magazine. “It’s my conscience bothering me."
Three years ago, he was an actor in running to be Ukraine's president. Now, he has to see his country through a bloody conflict.
" But two months of war have made him harder, quicker to anger, and a lot more comfortable with risk," Schuster wrote in his report about Zelensky. "Russian troops came within minutes of finding him and his family in the first hours of the war, their gunfire once audible inside his office walls. Images of dead civilians haunt him. So do the daily appeals from his troops, hundreds of whom are trapped belowground, running out of food, water, and ammunition."
Zelensky told TIME he had aged "from all this wisdom that I never wanted".
"It’s the wisdom tied to the number of people who have died, and the torture the Russian soldiers perpetrated. That kind of wisdom,” he added. “To be honest, I never had the goal of attaining knowledge like that.”
It has been over two months of loss and devastation for Ukraine. Russia continues its brutal attacks, reducing once-bustling cities to rubble. Thousands of people have been killed and more than 53 lakh have fled their homes.
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