Olena Zelenska and 'Vogue' are right

's report

on Olena Zelenska with the photos of Annie Leibovitz has caused toothaches even in pro-Ukrainian opinion-makers, who have taken their moralistic malaise for a walk, muttering "not like that".

This is not the time, they say, for frivolity.

Preachers who seem to be cashing in on Putin's reptile fund have rejoiced, as the cover of the fashion magazine would show Emperor Zelensky's nudity.

The more I read one and the other, the more I like the

portraits , a manifestation of coherence and bravery, as the headline of the profile of the first lady of Ukraine that they illustrate says: “

”.

The text could have been signed by Susan Sontag, who, had she been alive, would have accompanied Leibovitz to kyiv.

The article —which no self-righteous detractor cites, because they have not read it— is the work of Rachel Donadio, a great journalist based in Paris, where she was a correspondent for

.

His magnificent portrait of Olena fulfills the most basic and noble purposes of journalism: trying to understand the complexity of the present, recognizing its paradoxes.

“It is strange”, writes Donadio, “to mix the extermination of Ukraine and Ukrainian fashion in the same conversation, but this is the cognitive dissonance of the country, where designers and professionals of all kinds are mobilized to help their nation.

This cognitive dissonance is most pronounced in kyiv, where you can have a matcha in a cafe and then drive an hour to Bucha to visit a mass grave.”

The cover is Ukrainian propaganda, but also top-notch journalism.

Another difficult paradox to digest for those who have given up trying to understand the world because they bring it schematically from home, with very clear whites and blacks.

Olena uses

for her cause, and

uses Olena for hers.

The symbiosis is typical of the plural, complex, open and democratic society that the armies of Vladimir Putin (and not a few western fifth columnists) want to annihilate.

Neither the camera of Annie Leibovitz nor the photogenicity of the Zelenskis nor the prose of Donadio can do anything against Russian bombs, but planting a glossy cover of

in the midst of the triumphal march of all those new priests who dream of shutting us up in an Orthodox convent is a revenge.

Our merry Athens may succumb to leaden Russian Sparta.

Before that happens, we should assess whether a world without portraits of Leibovitz and filled, instead, with statues of satraps, is worthwhile.

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