‘Barbed wire, machine guns’, BBC reporter recounts behind-the-scenes interview with Zelensky in ‘Fortress’: I saw an exhausted man

In the report, Clive Myrie describes the path followed by the arrival at the ‘fortress’ building of the Ukrainian resistance as well as the behind the scenes of the interview with President Zelensky.

“The soldiers at the checkpoint carefully checked our passports,” the statement said, then handed them to us again. We were inside the ground of the building that was used as the headquarters of the resistance against the Russian occupation.

Barbed wire, mines and machine guns surround the building. Heavily armed soldiers were everywhere – the person I would meet was a man.

The Kremlin would like to see Volodymyr Zelensky dead and his government replaced with a puppet regime installed by Moscow. But during the 50 days of this war, Ukraine’s resistance has fascinated the world.

We passed our equipment through two sets of metal detectors and got inside. Downstairs were a series of long corridors, with sandbags piled up every few meters. A small hole was left in the pile near the top, through which the muzzle of a rifle could be inserted in the event of an attack.

An aide to the President led us to a door with a bronze plate on it: the words were read in the Situation Room. Inside, the room looked modern, with giant plasma screens covering the walls and fashionable chairs, with wheels with ergonomic backrests.

But there was a problem. Interviewing people sitting in wheelchairs can be tricky. Lost in their answers to questions, they tend to shift from side to side.

So we asked the president’s assistant for a wheelchair. “Umm,” he says, “I’ll see.”

He left the room and returned with two fairly old-looking chairs, all made of wood. Then I heard a few steps descending. Two soldiers entered the room and behind them was the President.

As we greeted, an assistant handed him a phone. Above it was a text message from France. “Is it Emmanuel?” he asked the assistant? “Yes,” came the reply.

“We have a connection and he calls me all the time,” the president tells me. “Does it bother you if I make a quick phone call?”

“Absolutely,” I say, surprised that he asked me if he should call the French president back immediately or try again.

But that’s part of Volodymyr Zelensky’s mass, a caress and charm that comes so naturally.

However, there were times during the next hour when I could say he was angry and upset: when he remembered that he had visited the town of Bucha, about 25 km (16 miles) north-west of central Kiev, which Russian forces had occupied for several week. After they withdrew, a mass grave was discovered near a church and there were bodies lying in the street.

I asked him if he believed Vladimir Putin was a war criminal. His response was that anyone with ties to the Russian military and their civilian masters were war criminals.

“Given everything that has happened, would you be able to sit around a negotiating table with these people and talk about peace?” I asked her.

“The window of opportunity is slipping away,” he replied, pointing to the atrocities in Bucha and Borodyanka as the main driver of this thought.

Zelensky is, of course, a former comedian and actor. But during the hour I was with him, I saw a man mentally exhausted and in deep pain for the treatment of his people. A man who has been compared to Churchill and who many will remember for his leadership during the dark days of the war.

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