Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Alleges Russian Troops Came Close To Capturing Him And His Family

The Ukrainian President’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, confirmed the same.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (Image Source: AFP)

New Delhi: Ukrainian President Volodymyr  Zelenskyy has in a recent interview said that Russian troops came very close to capturing him and his family.

 Zelenskyy in an interview with the TIME magazine said that the military informed him that teams of Russian strikers had parachuted into the capital city of Kyiv in order to kill or capture him and his family.

The Ukrainian President’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, confirmed the same.

“Before that night, we had only ever seen such things in the movies,” Yermak told the American news magazine detailing how the presidential guard attempted to secure the compound.

Reminiscing the early hours of February 24 when the bombing started in Kyiv,  Zelenskyy also spoke of how he and his wife Olena Zelenska broke the news of the war to their kids -- 17-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.

“We woke them up,” said Zelenskyy.

“It was loud. There were explosions over there,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the invasion on February 24.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had following a secrecy-shrouded visit to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv earlier this week said that Russia is falling in its war aims and “Ukraine is succeeding”.

“We had an opportunity to demonstrate directly our strong ongoing support for the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people. This was, in our judgement, an important moment to be there to have face-to-face conversations in detail,” Blinken told reporters earlier on Monday near the Polish-Ukrainian border, reported The Associated Press.

On their trip — the highest level American visit to Kyiv after Russia’s invasion in February — Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told Zelenskyy and his advisors that Washington D.C. would provide more than $300 million in foreign military financing and had also approved a $165 million sale of ammunition.