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Ordinary people took to Twitter to recount their experiences of chaos and dislocation after an invasion they were unprepared for, and described how they might have made different choices if they had known what was coming. Public figures and academics wrote sharp criticisms on Facebook of his decision to play down the risk of the invasion, saying he bore at least some responsibility for the atrocities that followed.
In an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, Zelensky cited his fears that Ukrainians would panic, flee the country and trigger an economic collapse as the reason he chose not to share the stark warnings conveyed by U.S. officials about the plans of Russia.
“If we had reported this … then I would have lost $7 billion a month since last October, and the moment the Russians really attacked, they would have taken us in three days,” Zelensky said.
He added that subsequent events – with Russian troops failing to reach the capital – suggested he had made the right decision.
“This is what happened when the invasion started – we were as strong as we could be. Some of our people left, but most of them stayed here, fighting for their homes. And as cynical as it sounds, these are the people who stopped it all.”
Many Ukrainians took exception to the suggestion that Zelensky prioritized the health of the economy over their well-being, and suggested that many lives could be saved if the government adequately prepared the population for war.
Sevgil Musaeva, editor-in-chief of Ukrainian news site Ukrainska Pravda, posted on Facebook that she was “personally offended” by Zelensky’s explanation, saying it questioned the intelligence of Ukrainians. She would not flee, she said, and the potential $7 billion-a-month cost to the economy must be weighed against the lives lost, Russia’s rapid takeover of parts of southern Ukraine and the fear and intimidation of civilians who unexpectedly find themselves under Russian occupation. .
“Honestly, my hair stood on end when I read what [Zelensky] said to evacuate. … How can a person who has Mariupol, Bucha and Kherson on his conscience say that an evacuation would overwhelm the country?” journalist Bohdan Butkevich wrote on his Facebook page, referring to the places where Russia has committed atrocities.
“He did not want to put the country on a military footing because he was afraid of losing power,” Butkiewicz wrote.
The lack of warning for civilians living in the threatened areas, and especially for those with children, the elderly and people with impaired mobility, was “not a bug, not a mistake, not an unfortunate misunderstanding, not a strategic mistake – this is a crime,” said the Ukrainian author Katerina Babkina.
The outpouring also included many defenses of Zelensky. Valery Pekar, a publicist who teaches at the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, wrote on Facebook that Ukrainians had wide access to media reports about the US warnings.
“Anyone who didn’t pack their own backpack after reading the news about the US intelligence reports has no right to claim they weren’t warned,” he said.
“We all knew and understood that war was coming. We just didn’t want to believe it because it was too terrible to be true,” Olena Gnes, founder of the What is Ukraine project, wrote on her Facebook page. “None of Zelensky’s statements would change anything essential.
Some of the criticism comes from political opponents who would take any opportunity to attack the president, Musaeva, the newspaper’s editor, said in an interview. But many did not.
The level of outrage is unprecedented in wartime Ukraine, she said, and represents perhaps “the first serious communications crisis” for Zelensky, considered a master communicator, and his team.
Even those who said they understood why Zelensky did not want to provoke panic said they nevertheless wondered if there were steps that could have been taken to ease the impact of the invasion, from preparing blood banks to digging trenches along the northern border to prevent Russian troops from capturing many towns and villages before being stopped outside Kyiv.
Such questions have remained unspoken since the ferocity of the invasion stunned the country on February 24, ordinary Ukrainians said. But the consensus is that Ukrainians should unite and refrain from criticism while the country is at war, said Oksana, 30, who was discussing the dispute Thursday in a Kiev cafe with her partner. She asked that her full name not be used because the subject is sensitive.
Now that some people are raising questions about Zelensky’s selection, many are debating whether more could have been done, she said.
“My biggest question is about the level of atrocities that we saw, and I think about whether they could have been prevented,” said Oksana, who did not vote for Zelensky but now supports him wholeheartedly as a leader from whom Ukraine needed to win the war.
“It would hurt us to discuss this now,” she said. “Ukraine is winning thanks to our faith in the president and our armed forces. So I’m willing to wait for the explanation until we win the war.
“That’s when we start asking questions,” she said. “There are questions that need answers because this is the society we’re fighting for — a society of accountability.”
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