For a moment, they were only a stone’s throw away from their President, even though they were thousands of kilometers from home.
Roughly 200 displaced Ukrainians gathered on the edge of the Schumann roundabout, the nerve center of the European Union, on Thursday morning trying to catch a glimpse of Volodymyr Zelensky as he drove through Brussels (a massive security operation highly unlikely).
They sang, they chanted and they waved yellow and blue Ukrainian flags. They represented Zelensky’s de facto constituency, even though his principal audience for the day was the 27 national leaders gathered in the glass bowl of the European Council building.
“We want to support him,” said Ksenia Tanokem, who fled Russian forces in Kherson and reached Brussels in April. “Many Europeans want to stop the war. But it cannot be stopped now.”
Ksenia’s husband, Lionel, stood by her side. He was working overseas as a sailor when the war broke out and was later joined by Ksenia and their four-year-old daughter in Brussels. They are only three of the thousands of Ukrainians who have made Belgium their wartime home.
Zelensky’s presence in his adopted city is reminiscent of those left behind in Ukraine. Ksenia’s parents live in Russian-occupied Novaya Kakhovka, a town in the southern region of Kherson Oblast. He peered through a Telegram channel showing damaged buildings near his parents’ house. “They destroyed everything,” she said.
Ksenia sends photos of her daughter and husband to her parents every day. Good news from Brussels. His daughter, who spent her fourth birthday under shelling, is now at a school in Belgium. Ksenia is taking free language courses.
“They are full of hope that we can be together again,” she reflected.
This sense of the future is reinforced by Zelensky’s presence in the EU capital. “Just watching him from afar would be amazing,” Lionel said. “He gives us dreams.” Before the war, Ksenia said, “Ukrainians don’t like Zelensky. But we saw what kind of person he is.”
“I am very proud of our president,” agreed Inha Podoroga from Kyiv. “He changed the world.” She also wanted to thank Belgium: “I love this country. People opened their hearts.
But Zelensky’s mission isn’t just to the heart of the EU – or even just to EU membership. It also wants European weapons and fighter aircraft.
“There are many feelings,” said Victoria Dzyuba. “But we can’t afford too much emotion because people are dying. … We hope he’ll convince them to give us the F-16s and the hard artillery … We’re seeing the results.
Not only his country needs these weapons. The crowd consisted almost exclusively of women and older men. The arms are for their fathers, husbands and sons.
“Our soldiers need more,” said Anastasia Savchenko, who also came from Kyiv.
Savchenko is in Brussels with her mother and 18-year-old sister. Her husband and father, like so many Ukrainian men of fighting age, are in the military. Savchenko’s mother showed a photograph of her husband, a chisel-jawed, gray man who appears to be in his fifties. He wore the same military green T-shirt that Zelensky had turned into a symbol of defiance.
She worries about Zelensky as much as she worries about men. “I hope nothing bad will happen to him” on his international tour, Savchenko said.
Savchenko, a university graduate, said the war had put her life on hold.
“I’m just waiting for Ukraine to win,” she said. “But I know we will win. One million percent.