Dhe carpets absorb every sound, the chandeliers are off. In the corridors of the Presidential Office in Kiev it is as pitch black as in any Ukrainian air raid shelter when Vladimir Putin’s rockets have hit another power plant and the power goes out. Except that in the monumental staircases and columned halls of the Presidential Palace on Pechersk Hill above the city, it is not only sometimes dark, but always. Security comes first, and if a Russian sabotage squad dares to launch an attack here, in the center of Ukrainian statehood, it will not find its way so easily. So visitors are picked up at the entrance by a discreet usher with a cell phone lamp and then led through the darkness up many stairs and around many corners.
By the way, the entrance hall is no longer a hall. Walls of sandbags criss-cross the hall, punctuated by loopholes and narrow passageways with metal detectors. An inner fortress, a labyrinth. The guards no longer wear parade uniform, as they used to, but rather battle gear with a wool hat, Kalashnikov rifle and three-day beard. Just like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his leadership group. Only the secretaries don’t do it. They are meticulously manicured and have high heels, as always in Ukraine.
Finally, at the end of an endless corridor, suddenly a cone of light. A door has opened on the right, and a sharp neon light falls on the runner from an office. Igor Zhovkva, deputy head of the chancellery and foreign policy adviser to the Ukrainian president, sits in a huge office with a grandfather clock that has stopped, under a Ukrainian flag and one from the European Union.
Mr. Zhovkwa, some German and American politicians are advising Ukraine to seek a ceasefire with Russia even if not all Russian-occupied areas have been reconquered. Are you being pressured into negotiations against your will?
No one is pushing us to negotiate against our will. I have not heard such proposals from our German or American friends, nor from representatives of other countries. It is a Russian narrative that we would suspend our counteroffensive in the winter. That will not happen.
