The Washington Post, which has a direct pipeline to the Democrat Party, was first to report about the decision by the US to help Ukraine President Zelensky to leave Kyiv to avoid being captured and/or killed by advancing Russian forces.
As the Russian military ratcheted up its attacks on Friday, a defiant Zelensky pledged to remain in charge of his government despite grave personal risk. “According to the information we have, the enemy has marked me as target No. 1, my family as target No. 2,” he told Ukrainians in an early-morning address. “They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”
The U.S. government is prepared to help Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky leave Kyiv to avoid being captured or killed by advancing Russian forces, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.https://t.co/w0oHddyIN9
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 26, 2022
NYT’s – As Russian missiles bombarded the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky seemed to go missing. Italy’s prime minister even told his own parliament, in a tremulous voice, that Mr. Zelensky had missed a planned call with him.
Later as Russian forces announced they had cut the city off from the western part of the country and captured strategic locations to Kyiv’s north, the Ukrainian leader emerged with one message:
“We are here,” he said in a recorded video on Friday night, standing in front of the presidency building flanked by his top advisers. “We are in Kyiv. We are protecting Ukraine.”
“Russia will try to break our resistance with all its might,” Zelensky warned
⚡️Ukraine’s Zelensky posts a new video of himself and his team outside the presidential administration in Kyiv’s government quarter after rumors in Russian media that he’d fled. “We are here. We are in Kyiv. We are defending Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/bgHyrsbVFs
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 25, 2022
The embattled leader, 44, who said on Thursday that his country’s intelligence services believe that he is Russia’s “number one target,” and his family the second, said he would not back down.
“Our army is here, our civil society is here, we are all here,” he said in the video, holding the camera himself and wearing military green. “We are defending our independence, our state, and we will continue to do so.”
President Zelensky again addressed the citizens of his nation tonight, issuing a dire warning of the danger that is to come to the capital city of Kyiv, as he told Ukrainians, “The fate of Ukraine is being decided right now.”
In a video put out at about midnight Kyiv time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told his country’s soldiers: "Tonight they will storm. We all need to understand what awaits us. We have to persevere tonight. The fate of Ukraine is being decided right now." pic.twitter.com/rnVBlYKXMn
— Peter Stevenson (@PeterStevenson) February 25, 2022
Pray for President Zelensky, his wife and children and for the citizens of Ukraine who have bravely stood up to the brutal dictator Vladimir Putin and his army.