Zelensky tells US Time magazine about the first few hours of war – fears for his family’s safety

He shared his recollections of that time in a new interview for leading US news publication Time magazine. Speaking to Time, Zelensky says his memories of that time are fragmentary. He thinks back to the hours before dawn on February 24, that is what he remembers most clearly.
 

He talked with his wife Olena, they were preparing to tell their children, a daughter aged 17 and a 9-year-old son, that the bombing had started and they need to go to safety. 
 

"We woke them up. It was loud, there were explosions over there," he told Time magazine. The Presidential palace was not safe. He received military reports that Russian troops had landed in Kyiv city center, on a mission to kill or capture the President and his family.
 

Alexei Arestovich, an adviser to the head of the President's Office, later said that Russian forces had tried to storm Bankova twice. As was later made public, Zelensky's children were in the Presidential Administration building at that time.