For a few moments, they were just a short walk from their president, even though they remain thousands of kilometers from home.
Roughly 200 displaced Ukrainians clustered Thursday morning at the edge of the Schuman roundabout, the nerve center of the European Union, seeking to catch a glimpse of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he moved through Brussels (something the massive security operation made highly unlikely).
They sang, they chanted and they waved yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags. They represented Zelenskyy’s actual constituency, even if his key audience for the day was the 27 national leaders gathered in the glass bowels of the European Council building.
“We want to support him,” said Ksenia Tanokem, who fled Russian forces in Kherson and arrived in Brussels in April. “Many Europeans want to stop the war. But it can’t be stopped now.”
Ksenia’s husband Lionel stood beside her. He was abroad working as a sailor when the war started and later joined Ksenia and their four-year-old daughter in Brussels. They are just three of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have made Belgium a wartime home.
Zelenskyy’s presence in their adopted city is a reminder of those left behind in Ukraine. Ksenia’s parents are in the Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, a city in the southern region of Kherson Oblast. She flicked through a Telegram channel showing damaged buildings near her parent’s home. “They destroyed everything,” she said.
Every day, Ksenia sends her parents photos of her daughter and husband. The news from Brussels is good. Their daughter, who spent her fourth birthday under shelling, is now in a Belgian school. Ksenia is taking free language courses.
“They are full of hope that we can be together again,” she reflected.
This sense of a future is reinforced by Zelenskyy’s presence in the EU capital. “Just to see him from afar would be wonderful,” Lionel said. “He gives us dreams.” Before the war, Ksenia added, “Ukrainian people don’t like Zelenskyy. But we saw what kind of person he is.”
“I’m very proud for my president,” agreed Inha Podoroga, from Kyiv. “He changed the world.” She also wanted to say thank you to Belgium: “I love this country. People opened their hearts.”
But Zelenskyy’s mission isn’t just for EU hearts — or even just for EU membership. It’s also European weaponry and fighter jets he wants.
“There are many feelings,” said Victoria Dzyuba. “But we can’t afford too many feelings because people are dying. … We hope he will persuade them to give us F-16s and hard artillery … We are looking for the results.”
It’s not just their country that needs these weapons. The crowd was almost exclusively women and older men. The arms are for their fathers, husbands and sons.
“Our soldiers need more,” said Anastasia Savchenko, who also came from Kyiv.
Savchenko is in Brussels with her mother and 18-year-old sister. Her husband and father, like so many Ukrainian men of fighting age, are in the military. Savchenko’s mother showed a photo of her husband, a chiseled-jawed, graying man, who appears to be in his fifties. He was dressed in the same military green T-shirt that Zelenskyy has turned into an icon of defiance.
They worry for Zelenskyy like they worry for the men. “I hope nothing bad will happen to him” on his international tour, Savchenko said.
Savchenko, a university graduate, said her life has been put on hold by the war.
“I just wait until Ukraine will win,” she said. “But I know we will win. One million percent.”
