In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Olena Zelenska said she can’t convince her nine-year-old son to return to the arts and humanities. “Before the war, my son went to the folk dance ensemble. He played the piano. He learned English. Of course he attended sports clubs,” Ms. Zelenska told NBC News’ Peter Alexander through a translator. Putin’s forces close in on major power plant – as Russia says it will expand its targets – Ukraine updates live Now, he said, “the only thing he wants to do is martial arts and how to use a rifle.” Ms. Zelenska spent Wednesday with U.S. officials, sharing her country’s call for more weapons to stave off a Russian invasion. She met with congressional leaders to make the plea on behalf of her husband, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who remains in Ukraine as the country enters its fifth month of war since the Russian invasion. In her message to Congress, she described a fear, sense of danger and preoccupation with war that has gripped Ukrainians and emphasized her desire for children to be able to find normalcy again. Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 0:35 May – “Nobody’s Taking My Man” “And that’s what I really want to make sure, is that my son’s childhood is given back to him and that he enjoys his life to the fullest,” she told NBC. Since Sunday, Ms Zelenska has met with several US officials, including First Lady Jill Biden, whom she first met on the Ukrainian border on Mother’s Day, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. On Wednesday, she stood in the auditorium of the US Capitol Visitor Center to emphasize her country’s need for more military equipment. Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 0:23 May – Jill Biden meets the first lady of Ukraine “I’m asking something now that I never wanted to ask,” Ms. Zelenska told members of Congress. “I’m asking for guns – guns that won’t be used to wage war on someone else’s land, but to protect their home and the right to wake up alive in that home.” Read more: Ukraine’s first lady rallies her two million Instagram followers on horrors of war – but who is she and how did the couple meet? The lessons military planners are learning from the invasion of Ukraine and what it means if the UK went to war with Russia To highlight that need, Ms Zelenska began her speech with a slide show filled with pictures of Ukrainian children killed in the Russian invasion and said she was “asking for air defense systems so the missiles don’t kill”. Subscribe to Ukraine War Diaries on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Spreaker The US is preparing to send four more highly mobile artillery rocket systems to Ukraine, which have significantly extended the country’s missile range. This brings the total number of long-range missile launchers provided by the US to 16. In her speech, Ms. Zelenska emphasized that these contributions mean that “while Russia kills, America saves.”
