It is hard not to notice the commotion around the SAVA-UA textile factory, with police officers deployed at intersections and other men in khaki uniforms posted around the premises. Inside the factory on the outskirts of Kovel in northwestern Ukraine, however, the female employees continued to work at their machine tools late Tuesday morning, July 30, as if nothing had happened.
And then suddenly the presidential escort arrived. Several black vans, armored cars. The colossi of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s close guard were the first to get out, securing the area. The head of state of the country at war sprang out of one of the cars with an athletic stride, heading immediately towards those who were waiting for him, shaking hands as they went: a few local personalities from the region, the Minister of Economy, Yulia Svyrydenko, and the director of the plant, smiling at the president.
The visit began at a brisk pace, with the president accompanied by an entire escort and his close team: the head of the presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, whom evil tongues worried about his influence nickname the “green cardinal”always present alongside the chief, Dmytro Lytvyn, the pen, Oleksiy Kuleba, deputy head of the cabinet…
This is how the head of state’s days have been since the start of the Russian invasion launched on February 24, 2022. Between his trips abroad and his speeches at international summits, the former comedian tours the country and addresses Ukrainians, whether they are soldiers deployed on the front line or civilians relatively sheltered in the rear of the country. Almost thirty months since the outbreak of the war and faced with the decline in morale of part of the population, the leader strives to present an image of invincibility and resilience. He himself is the image of this long war: always dressed in khaki, his face eaten away by a beard and his features increasingly hard and drawn as the conflict continues and ravages the whole of Ukraine.
Communication operations
A few hours before his arrival at the factory, Volodymyr Zelensky had begun his visit to the Volyn and Rivne regions with a visit to the fortifications built on the border with Belarus, a neighboring dictatorship that is both a vassal and a supporter of the war waged by Russia. The day before, he had visited advanced positions of Ukrainian special forces in the Kharkiv region, to the east, the target of a Russian offensive a few months earlier, in order to decorate the soldiers.
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