videos, photos and messages to resist- Corriere.it

S.am among us. More anonymous than us. Twenty-thirty men, they suspect. A trained commando ready to kill the president: they are the Russian saboteurs who prowl in search of their prey, the terminators of the Kremlin that now everyone is looking for. The first real invaders of Kiev and with a precise mission: “Killing Flight”as shown on social media, people charged with wiping Volodymyr Zelensky off the face of Ukraine.

You will not recognize them easily: anyone with information or even just doubts is on the alert of the Ministry of the Interior, call immediately and report without hesitation. Even a small detail can be important. “Why do you have Russian stamps?” A soldier inspects our passport, on the third morning of the war, before letting us get off at the Khreshchatyk subway stop: «And the cell phone? See the photos, please ».

He gave the chivalà himself,
Volodymyr Zelensky
. And once again he did it using social media, the least locatable of the means: “According to the information we have,
the enemy has identified me as target number 1 and my family as target number 2. They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying its head of state ”.

Videos, photos, posts. Waiting for the anti-aircraft that never arrived, or did not arrive as much as hoped, all the leaders of resistant Ukraine rely on the only weapon that can make a dictator’s life a little less easy: speech. Former President Petro Poroshenko, the chocolate industrialist, Zelensky’s great rival, returned from Poland on purpose to join the common fight against the invader, shows up live at the Cnn with the vest of the raiders and raises a short barrel Kalashnikov. And also Yulya Timoshenko, the former premier who does not give up even in these hours to the perfect hairstyle and pink overcoat, poses and poses with a rifle in hand, in a small group of fighters. Probably stuffed with painkillers, to defend himself from the migraine that afflicts him when the tension is exaggerated, even Zelensky now relies on social media. And tweet, instagram, telegram nonstop.

Its form of resistance. Dozens of shots, to return some of them to the enemy: “A new day has begun on the diplomatic front with the conversation with @EmmanuelMacron”, he fires early in the morning. And so on, with the series of messages, summaries of interviews: “This is the beginning of a new page of history among the countries “ (hashtag Mario Draghi, after a clarification call), “Germany and Hungary have the courage to sanction the enemy” (to Viktor Orbán), “India does not abstain in the Security Council on the condemnation of Russia” ( to Narendra Modi), “Thanks to the leaders who assist us” (to the Swiss Ignazio Cassis and the Greek Kyriakos Mitsotakis), “the battle is here, I need ammunition, not a lift” (to the US State Department who wanted to evacuate him), “We need more effective EU assistance” (to Ursula von der Leyen), “with this war we have earned the right to enter Europe” (to all the saints who can help him).

The populist president also speaks to his people: “More than a hundred thousand invaders are on our territory”; “Our army thwarted a Russian plan to install a new pro-Russian government”; “Our army controls Kiev and the key cities around the capital. We have undone their plan “; «Ukraine will triumph over Russian forces. Our military, our National Guard, our National Police, our Territorial Defense, the Special Service, the Ukrainian citizens, please continue, we will win! “; “Our weapons are our truth. And our land. And our country. Our children. Let’s go and defend all of this. Glory to Ukraine! ».

A post every half hour. It is its hybrid anti-aircraft. From the Union of Socialist Republics to the unity of a republic founded on social media: in 30 years of independence from Moscow, Ukraine had five presidentsthree revolutions, an invasion, a secession, a low voltage war of 14,000 dead and now this hell on earth, with Zelensky forced to speak from a bunker and via cell phone. Target Number One may not have a choice, even if communicating important messages via social media has always been his obsession: in more peaceful times, to make it clear that he wanted to deal with a criminal who was holding hostages, he posted a link to a film with the plot centered around a negotiation.

The Russians naturally mock him: “Zelensky has already left Kiev – says the president of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin -, everyone knows that he is now in Lviv. On Friday he was no longer in the Ukrainian capital and the videos he publishes on social media were recorded in advance ».

Volodymyr, like Poroshenko, Putin’s counter-information was expected and in fact he is filmed among soldiers who are fumbling or in front of the Bankova, the White House in Kiev. But this is not enough for the Kremlin: “A fake. The Americans have already provided housing to him and his assistants “. At the end of a very hard day, in the real trenches and on the web, even Zelensky is exhausted. And in response to the Russians he only posts a face that laughs, to tears. A laugh that erases fear.