The interview came at perhaps the toughest moment for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Zelenskiy insisted, however, that it was too early to write off the country, and that he remained positive despite all his frustrations. “I’m not in despair at all … I don’t feel like we are on a sinking ship which is going to the bottom. We are not shouting ‘save us’.”
The president is, however, shouting for more urgency. Russia is on the offensive in the Kharkiv region, an advance that came after months of delay in the US Congress over the passing of a major support package, limiting Ukraine’s battlefield capacities. Then, there was the ban on using western weapons to hit Russian military targets across the border, limiting its ability to defend itself.
In the hours after the interview, the US administration finally shifted on that issue, allowing Ukraine to use certain US weapons on targets in the Russian border areas around Kharkiv. It is a permission that may have been more useful three weeks ago, when Ukrainian intelligence could first see Russian troops gathering across the border in preparation for the assault. This sense of decisions being taken long after Ukraine needed them has been a recurring motif of western policy making over the past two years, and one that has caused much frustration.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Dressed in green military trousers and a black T-shirt, Zelenskiy strode across the parquet floor of the grand, ceremonial room inside Kyiv’s presidential compound, and sat down to speak for nearly an hour with a Guardian team, including the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner.
The expressive face, the frequent gesticulations and the intense eye contact all make a powerful impression – it is not difficult to see why international leaders have so often changed their minds after one-on-one meetings with Zelenskiy.
In the early weeks of the fighting, with the Russian army bearing down on Kyiv, the presidential administration compound on Bankova Street was eerily deserted, its long corridors darkened, save for a weak glow from tiny lights placed along the floor.
The interview took place in a room sometimes used for presenting state awards; chandeliers hung from the ceiling, a tapestry depicting a stylised modernist version of an Orthodox Virgin Mary adorned one wall.
Kyiv had picked the date to be close to the G7 summit in Italy, making it just a short hop for Joe Biden to attend, but the US president reportedly plans to fly home for a fundraising event in California instead, diminishing the stature of the whole project.
Unlike Vladimir Putin, who also likes to dig into the archives, Zelenskiy does not appear interested in using historical documents to make claims about rights to land or to bolster patriotic propaganda points.
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