In an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, the First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska stressed the importance of returning faith in the world and life to Ukrainian children affected by the war.
"The children lost everything, found themselves in basements under bombs, next to wounded or dead loved ones. How can we prove to them now that life has meaning, that there is something good left for them in the world? Looking for an answer, I initiated the National Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Programme. The best specialists in the world must teach our specialists to deal with the consequences of the traumatic events caused by the war throughout the country. This is the only effective option for help I see now. I definitely do not want Ukrainian children to be traumatized for life. We must restore their faith in the world that is open to them," said the President's wife in an interview published in Sunday's issue of the newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
She also spoke about more than 37,000 women in the Ukrainian army and plans to rebuild the country: “We will be facing a recovery - factual and psychological. Today we have more than 1,600 schools, 600 hospitals, a huge number of houses destroyed… And we are starting the reconstruction now, so that at least some of the hospitals and schools start working by the autumn. And, of course, we will need an even greater barrier-free environment than the one we were working on before the war. We have more and more people with disabilities every day, the war cripples children and adults. We have to create the best possible conditions for them - both spatial in the rebuilt cities, and psychological."
In addition, Olena Zelenska stressed that, just as after the tragedy of Auschwitz, it is impossible to live "as before" after the tragedies of Mariupol, Bucha and other Ukrainian cities.
"But we want this suffering to turn into strength, and we will do everything possible for that," she said.
Die Welt is a leading German daily socio-political newspaper, published since 1946.
