How did the war transform Volodymyr Zelensky?
2:17
Editor's note:
Rafael Romo is the presenter of the newscast "Mirador Mundial" on CNN en Español.
In addition to having covered the war in Ukraine for a month, he has reported on world conflicts, natural disasters, and electoral processes in countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Haiti, and France.
His reports and articles, in Spanish and English, are published on television and digital platforms on all CNN networks around the world.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
You can find more opinion pieces at CNNe.com/opinion.
(CNN Spanish) --
March 29, 2022. I finally crossed the border of Poland.
I am already in Ukraine.
The first thing that strikes me upon entering a country at war is that gray dominates everything.
Gray are the valleys that the road we travel through crosses.
Gray is the sky of this noon of a spring that does not appear anywhere.
Gray is the mood of the border authorities who have just reviewed my documents.
Gray is the face of the tens of thousands of mothers who flee the country with young children in their arms, seeking refuge in Poland, Hungary and Romania, not knowing if they will ever see the husbands they left behind on the front lines. .
And gray is the temperament of Ukrainians who are still trying to come to terms with the stark reality that their country is the victim of a senseless and appalling invasion.
Gray is also the temperament of my driver/translator/guide, who picked me up in Krakow, Poland.
He happens to happen that just before going to pick me up at the airport he had just put his wife, his daughter and his mother on a flight to Milan.
Just two days ago a missile had passed over the Lviv residential building where they lived.
For my guide, that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Like millions of Ukrainians, the war separated his family from him.
To my surprise, and to the surprise of the rest of the world, despite the onslaught of Russian missiles that fell on Ukrainian territory by dozens in those first days of the war, Ukraine was a country that was terrified, but not subdued.
This is how the war in Ukraine made Zelensky a world leader
A billboard I saw in the Yavorivs'kyi district caught my eye.
"Do not run away;
protect [your homeland],” she read in huge letters.
It was a message that men of fighting age, and many women as well, took to heart.
Many enlisted in the Army.
Later, I found another poster in the city of Lviv, showing a bear with a paw severed by a much smaller animal.
The legend under the illustration could not be clearer: "Whoever comes to us sword in hand, he will die by the sword," he said.
My driver puts the image in context for me.
“Ukrainians are aware that we are a smaller country, with less weapons and fewer soldiers than Russia.
And, certainly, we are afraid, ”he tells me.
But he also makes it clear that the Kremlin's decision to invade has caused a radical change in his country.
Before the invasion there was a significant bloc of Ukrainians sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.
But after the start of the war, and especially after the atrocities committed by Putin's forces in towns like Bucha and Borodianka, where the Russians raped and murdered women and killed both men and children, that sentiment changed forever.
“Among all the bad things Putin has done, there is one good one: he managed to get Ukraine to unite, something that no Ukrainian president has done in 30 years,” the guide told me.
That was the favor Putin did Ukraine.
Covering the invasion was experiencing firsthand only a fraction of the horror experienced by millions of people caught up in conflicts and wars around the world.
Air raid alarms were sounding all the time.
At first, I was concerned that our team might be hit by a missile.
But after a week of listening to them constantly, day and night and sometimes hour after hour, they stopped working.
It was then that four missiles fell a few kilometers from us, leaving seven dead and 11 wounded.
What does war smell like?
I knew that day.
Later, we learned that the Russians had launched four more missiles in our direction, which were fortunately shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.
A year after the start of the invasion, the war still seems as surreal to me as it did when I was in the Ukraine covering it.
There are images that have remained forever etched in my memory: public buildings barricaded with sandbags, World War II bunkers made useful again, tense soldiers and policemen with their fingers on triggers, people shopping in the streets. hours that there was no curfew, the musician in the Ivan Franko Park who defied the Russian bullets with his notes, and the creaking of the tram that never stopped moving.
I am left with the memory of a president who refused to flee, of a father who preferred to have his family far away, but safe, and of a country that, then and now, has shown the world that unity is strength.
