Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska took to her Instagram to show some of the horrific attacks that Russian forces have made against Ukraine, including a maternity hospital and medical center that was destroyed by an airstrike on Wednesday March 9. The videos she shared showed the debris from the attack, as well as some people trying to help, and a few people could be seen leaving the scene. In the background, men and women could be heard yelling in Ukrainian.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wife said that there wasn’t any telling how many casualties there’d been from the attack just yet, but she pleaded with international forces to take further action to prevent more attacks from Russia. “That’s a terrifying video, but we can’t see the worst yet. We do not know how many mothers and children were killed and injured,” she wrote. “We ask NATO to close our sky on behalf of entire Ukraine. We ask for anything like this to never happen again, but we are not being heard. In the meantime, the enemy planes are blatantly murdering civilians.”
This is far from the first time that the first lady has shown a light on the tragedies that many women and children still in Ukraine have faced in wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Zelenska detailed what schools and hospitals have had to do in order to work during the attacks. “Ukrainian children have to live and study in bomb shelters, and hospitals have to treat their patients in basements,” she wrote in a March 2 Instagram post.
Other than saying what schools and hospitals have done during the attacks, Zelenska posted videos of two other European first ladies showing support for Ukraine, and she implored others to speak out against Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Don’t be quiet! Tell them that Putin is threatening to start a nuclear war, and if he does, there will be no safe place in the world anymore,” she wrote in a caption along with the videos.
Following Russia’s initial attack on February 25, President Joe Biden announced new sanctions placed on the country to hurt its economy, and he invited Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova to be a guest at his State Of The Union address. During the ongoing effort to combat Russia’s attacks, the president announced a ban Russian oil on Tuesday March 8, per CNN.