Inside the court of King Zelensky

The first hint that my audience with Volodymyr Zelensky might not be what I’d hoped for came with the emailed invite. A few days before I’d been told I’d made the shortlist for a select presidential news conference marking the anniversary of the war. Not quite an exclusive interview, granted, but given current Zelenskymania, a decent second best. Images of a cosy roundtable in the secret presidential bunker beckoned.

Alas, when the email from his office finally arrived, it was notably bereft of the cloak and dagger one might expect. No orders to leave my phone at home. No secret rendezvous with a blacked-out van. Just an order to report at 3.30pm to 2A Velyka Zhytomyrska Street – which turned out not to be some anonymous bunker, but Kyiv’s best-known hotel, the Intercontinental. Where myself and roughly 500 other star-struck hacks – who’d all likewise got excited at the prospect of a tête à tête – were then crammed into a conference suite.