French press review

Featured: Mr and Mrs Zelensky

Audio 03:54

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska, in kyiv in November 2019 (photo illustration).

© Future Publishing/Getty Images

By: Frédéric Couteau Follow

4 mins

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is on the front page of

Liberation

this morning and his wife, Olena Zelenska, on the front page of Le

Parisien. 

This is the first time that Olena Zelenska has spoken in the European press since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine on February 24.

To the

Parisian

's first question  : " 

How are you?"

 she replies: “ 

like a human being who has a war in his house.

Like every Ukrainian.

I rush to the information.

Where did the enemy aim this time?

Are there any victims?

Every day you have to call all your relatives.

Are they alive?

Check emails.

If the messages show as read, there is still hope that they had some network, that they are alive. 

(…)

I would like to thank all the Europeans who now help our people – who house, feed, encourage

, continues Olena Zelenska.

(…)

The way you reacted… It deserves the collective Nobel Peace Prize!

Ukrainians are wonderful and very grateful people.

Our children will never forget what you do for us.

 »

Le Parisien

highlights the work in the shadow of the Ukrainian first lady, who organizes the evacuation of sick children.

“ 

We need real secure humanitarian corridors

, she says, where

 mortars are not fired.

Where old people don't die of heart attacks.

In which entire families do not die.

(…) [Since the beginning of the war]

more than 109 children have been killed and more than 120 injured.

It is difficult for me to quote these balance sheets.

It is a personal tragedy for every Ukrainian. 

»

The man for the job

On the front page of

Liberation:

“ 

Zelensky the irreducible 

”.

Comic star with a clumsy humor who has become a warlord respected beyond his borders, the Ukrainian president now embodies the resistance against the Russian invader 

", points out the newspaper.

“ 

A real leader, one of those who can bring people together on the same project and push them to surpass themselves.

This requires human qualities and courage that are not given to everyone.

Who knows how the war would have turned out if the Ukrainian president, from the very first days, had accepted the American offer to flee the country when it was rumored that he was wanted by Russian mercenaries who had infiltrated kyiv to kill him?

No matter what, Commander

"Ze" 

will remain the example of a resistance that has become the watchword of an entire people

.

»

Conversely, notes

Liberation

, " 

Vladimir Putin, who seemed to be a strong and formidable man, planning his slightest progress to the nearest centimeter, appears above all, after a month of fighting, like a cold monster pulverizing without qualms everything that stands, including women and children.

Perhaps he will achieve his ends, but at the cost of so many crimes and irreversible damage, even in Russia, that he will not be able to grow out of it. 

»

The strategy of terror

Putin, who pushes his strategy of terror to the extreme... This is what

Le Figaro

points out  : " 

to besiege cities to transform them into hell on earth and annihilate any desire for resistance: in his mind, the strategy of terror has proven itself in Grozny or Aleppo.

But Kiev is four times larger than Grozny,

points out

Le Figaro.

It is a European capital and, as such, its destruction could become a red line for Westerners, in the same way as the use of chemical or nuclear weapons.

Obsessed with history, has Putin forgotten that 900 days of terror were not enough to bend the Russians in Leningrad?

His

"special operation" (as he calls it)

is already lost

.

And

Le Figaro

to wonder: “ 

between negotiations and escalation, will the Westerners find a formula to prevent him from going to the end of his

“dirty war” 

?

 »

Putin one day in front of judges?

Another question: Will Putin be accountable to international justice?

The International Criminal Court opened an investigation in early March.

Previously, Ukraine had the International Court of Justice as well as the European Court of Human Rights.

Comment from

Le Monde

 : “ 

All these initiatives are welcome, as it is important that Vladimir Putin's war does not go unpunished.

In any case, we must support the work of the Ukrainian justice system and that of the ICC, so that the prospect of arrest warrants can make some Russian officials, civilians and military, think twice.

So that they never sleep in peace, they must be reminded of the fate, among others, of the Serbian leaders Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, who ended up being dragged before the judges in The Hague. 

»

All of our daily, live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

© FMM Graphic Studio

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