Time magazine has released a photo of the Ukrainian leader in front of a painting depicting the Kremlin engulfed in flames
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has compared Vladimir Zelensky’s office to a “psychiatric hospital” over his choice of paintings.
Photos published by Time magazine on Monday show Zelensky posing in front of two war-themed paintings — one depicting Ukrainian troops fighting on Russian territory, and the other, reportedly his favorite, showing the Kremlin engulfed in flames.
The photo of Zelensky standing beside the paintings was reportedly taken as he gave Time correspondent Simon Shuster a tour of his office one evening earlier in March. The report also mentioned a third painting, showing a Russian warship sinking in the Black Sea, though it was not visible in the photo. Time said Zelensky selected the paintings himself, and that they now hang in a small room behind his main office.
Asked by TASS to comment on the images, Zakharova replied simply “a psych ward,” without further elaboration.
Her view was echoed by Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia’s upper chamber, the Federation Council. He said the painting of the burning Kremlin in Zelensky’s office pointed to the latter’s limited mental capacity.
“The man is sick in the head,” Dzhabarov told Lenta.ru on Monday. “Would it occur to a normal person to hang such paintings? He made his dreams come true, apparently the dreams of all Ukrainian neo-Nazis…” he said.
Zakharova has previously branded Zelensky a “monster” and a “maniac [gripped by] sick delusions” over his nuclear rhetoric and past remarks about attacking the Kremlin.
In October 2022, Zelensky called on the international community to carry out “preemptive strikes” on the Kremlin if Russia attacked Bankovaya Street, where his office is located.
Zelensky has also expressed regret that he could not strike the Kremlin using long-range weapons supplied to Kiev by Western countries. The Kremlin described the comments as “nothing else than a call to start a world war.”
