On a visit to Dallas, Olena Zelenska advocated for abducted Ukrainian children, raising awareness and aid. She highlighted war’s human toll, misinformation,...
Four years into a grinding war her nation never asked for, Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska has the bearing of a woman who has seen the worst the world can offer. But there is no resignation in her eyes, and during a nearly one-hour interview on a visit to Dallas last week, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made clear that her mission on behalf of her country’s children is only just beginning.
One of the nastiest elements of the unimaginably brutal war Russia has waged on Ukraine is something too few Americans seem to remember, if they ever knew it at all. Since the start of the war, and especially in its early days when Russia was still grabbing territory, thousands of Ukrainian children were kidnapped and taken into Russia. The total number is about 20,000 by reliable estimates. Of those, perhaps 2,000 have been returned. Zelenska, a mother herself, has made the safe return of those remaining a key part of her expansive mission, both at home and abroad.She was in Dallas raising funds to assist in that mission while helping us understand the war as she has seen it unfold. She also dedicated a shelf of books about Ukraine at the Dallas Public Library; celebrated the addition of a Ukrainian language audio guide at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum; and visited former American first lady Laura Bush and her husband, George. “We admire your country’s bravery and ingenuity,” former President Bush told Zelenska. “You are fighting for freedom, and I believe you will prevail.”The president’s words about freedom may have reminded Zelenska about children in Russian custody, as so many things seem to do. It was a topic our interview returned to again and again. “This is a very painful issue for us, the issue of illegally abducted Ukrainian children. We cannot allow for their rights to be violated. This is a violation of international law, and Ukraine is doing absolutely everything to make sure they’re brought back home,” Zelenska said through an interpreter. Even as Ukrainian children are known to be in the hands of Russian kidnappers — Russian President Vladimir Putin has even created a state agency for them — the Ukrainian people are forced to listen to propaganda and misinformation about the very children who’ve been stolen. The Russians “come to these territories with war, they bring war there, they create danger, and then they start rescuing children from the danger they created,” Zelenska said. A dirty, dystopian trick.She often tells a story of a Ukrainian boy who fell into the hands of Maria Lvova-Belova, Putin’s commissioner for children’s rights. Such is the Orwellian title of a woman who gathered up children from the cities Russia destroyed. “She openly talks about adopting a Ukrainian teenage boy from Mariupol, who at the start of the adoption was protesting. He did not see this as a positive change in his life. He continued trying to speak Ukrainian, he sings Ukrainian songs,” Zelenska said.“So basically, they morally broke this child,” Zelenska said. Too many Americans have either lost or lack a sense of the nature of good versus evil in the war in Ukraine, or have been misguided by the deluge of misinformation, some of it created as a means of warfare. Zelenska recounted a conversation she had with a European acquaintance about the plight of abducted Ukrainian children. The acquaintance suggested a prisoner swap. Couldn’t Ukraine just release all the Russian children they had kidnapped? The woman was shocked to learn that Ukraine holds no kids captive, as she had been led to believe.Kidnapped children are only one part. There are thousands upon thousands of children who have lost their parents. Almost 2.6 million — one third of Ukraine’s kids — have been displaced,. A major part of Zelenska’s work is helping foster families get adequate housing and funding to support children, many of whom are suffering from the trauma of terrible loss. Zelenska was quick to thank Americans for their generosity, and singled out first lady Melania Trump, who was an early proponent for the return of kidnapped children. The day before our interview, Zelenska attended a White House gathering of first spouses from around the world. She was thankful, too, for the generosity of those in Dallas who have helped her cause. And she made a little common cause with Texas.In a simple brown suit with a pale blue blouse and a single beaded pin on her lapel, she looked the diplomatic complement to her husband, who has spent years at war dressed like a man whose nation is a battlefield.President Zelenskyy has said many times that he is “target number one” for Russian forces and that his family is “target number two.” Both spouses have a worn look in their eyes, a mix of exhaustion and resilience with a depth that’s hard to measure. From so far away, it’s difficult for us to grasp what is really happening, how a country once at peace has been devastated by the nuclear power next door in the name of nothing other than a vicious tyrant’s dreams of even more power. It’s hard to imagine missiles raining down on the apartments and homes of people day after day. It’s hard to imagine high-rise apartment buildings entirely without power on winter nights with temperatures reaching -13 degrees because drone attacks target power grids. Zelenska doesn’t have to imagine it. Details like that spill into her conversation from a memory crowded with images of suffering.The question we must keep asking is whether our nation is doing enough. From the beginning, the fight in Ukraine has struck us as existential to freedom. Ukrainians have died in vast numbers not only to keep their homeland from becoming a vassal state, but in the name of democratic norms around the world.If a dictator can decide on a whim to destroy a peaceful land, to murder and subjugate its people and to steal its children, there can be no true peace anywhere. We owe a debt to the president and first lady of Ukraine, to its soldiers and its people that the West may never be able to repay.Rudy has covered politics, government, crime and all three mixed together for both The Dallas Morning News and The Chicago Tribune.Libraries, roads and City Hall: Here’s what came up in Dallas’ budget town halls
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