Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with the New York Post published Tuesday he hoped to see leftist American counterpart Joe Biden visit his country, but he did not believe Biden had control over his own travel itinerary.
Asked if he was “hopeful” Biden would appear in Kyiv, Zelensky said, “I don’t know, that is his choice. I mean, not even his choice, it’s his security, it’s their choice.”
Zelensky has repeatedly invited Biden to Ukraine, but Biden has ignored the requests. Biden publicly snubbed multiple requests by Zelensky to meet to discuss a potential invasion last year, opting instead to meet with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
The interview, in which Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska also participated, bizarrely featured Morgan repeatedly appearing to attempt to undermine Zelensky in front of his wife – demanding he apologize to her for not telling her he would run in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election, asking if their marriage is strained, then asking Zelensky if he was aware his wife was too beautiful for him. Morgan also asked substantive questions about the state of the war and Ukraine’s relationship with America.
On a potential Biden visit, Zelensky told Morgan it would be “a great signal” of support to the Ukrainian people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the D.C. outlet Axios in a statement on Monday that his country “needs the West to impose a no-fly zone,” a significant escalation potentially tantamount to an act of war. https://t.co/nx6I7g60K2
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 28, 2022
“This would be the highest support. And we had huge support from the first lady. She met with Olena, and it was the correct visit,” the president said, referring to First Lady Jill Biden’s surprise Mother’s Day visit to Kyiv in May. “Very, I would say, unexpected. I would say we were waiting for it a lot, but we didn’t expect it to happen. These are very important things.”
Zelensky said he would “very much” like a visit from Biden, but “that is his choice. I mean, not even his choice, it’s his security, it’s their choice.” Zelensky suggested that Biden would visit if he had control of his own schedule.
Zelensky admitted in the interview, with tabloid fixture Piers Morgan, that he had had exchanges with Biden that were less than “diplomatic” and said that no help from the United States would be enough for Ukraine until the latest round of invasion by Russia – which first invaded and colonized parts of the country in 2014 – was over.
“I can tell you that the help would not be sufficient until the war is over, and until we win,” Zelensky said. “A few times I’ve spoken with President Biden and I told him about our people and about our country, I said, ‘Forgive me if I’m quite firm in my position’ — maybe some things are not very diplomatic, but he gave me quite a dignified response, that he understands and he would do the same in my place.”
The Biden administration has given Ukraine upwards of $7 billion in American taxpayers’ dollars to Ukraine since Putin announced a full-scale invasion of the country, including bombing the capital Kyiv, in February.
Asked to respond to Americans concerned that Biden is spending too much to protect Ukraine while ignoring the myriad economic and social issues at home that have worsened under his presidency, Zelensky dismissed the idea that Americans have problems that require more of Biden’s attention than Ukraine’s.
U.S. lawmakers issued warnings against escalating Ukraine war tensions after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged President Joe Biden to do so in a congressional speech on Wednesday.
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 16, 2022
“As long as we are resisting it [the invasion], the integrity of the United States will continue, therefore we are giving our lives for your values and the joint security of the world,” Zelensky said. “Therefore, inflation is nothing, [Chinese coronavirus] is nothing. Ask those people who lost their children, their peace, their property at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. Who is thinking about masks and [Chinese coronavirus]? Who is thinking about inflation? These things are secondary.”
Putin colonized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and has supported a war between the government and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region for the past eight years. In announcing the new “operation” in February, Putin denied that Ukraine had a “tradition” of being a sovereign state at all. He has since recognized the “sovereignty” of the separatist groups, which call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics.”
The escalation of the war this year followed two major actions by Biden appearing to greenlight escalation of aggression by Russia: the lifting of Trump-era sanctions on the Nordstream 2 pipeline project – which would have greatly cemented Russia’s stranglehold on the European natural gas market if the invasion had not halted its completion – and a speech in January in which Biden said that America would not object to a “minor incursion” into Ukraine.
“Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera,” Biden told reporters.
“We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations,” Zelensky responded at the time.
Zelensky later expressed frustration with Biden consistently talking about a potential invasion publicly, telling reporters that same month that Biden’s “panic” had cost Ukraine nearly $500 million in foreign investment.
“I mentioned this to President Biden … we need to stabilize the economy of our country because of those signals which say that tomorrow there will be war,” Zelensky said, “because these signals were sent by even leaders of the respected countries, sometimes they are not even using diplomatic language! They are saying, ‘Tomorrow is the war.'”
The “minor incursion” fiasco followed very public feuding between Biden and Zelensky for months on the issue of the Nordstream 2 sanctions. Biden lifted the sanctions in mid-2021, prompting Zelensky to angrily rail to the Washington media outlet Axios that he was “unpleasantly surprised” and “disappointed” by Biden, both by the sanctions lifting and the fact that Biden did not communicate with the Zelensky administration before lifting the sanctions.
Zelensky again warned in December that lifting sanctions gives Russia a signal to further invade and any sanctions imposed after a full-scale invasion “won’t matter.”
“Our state is interested in a strong sanctions policy that would precede a possible escalation, and then, I suggest, this escalation might not even occur,” Zelensky said at the time.
“Sanctions are considered to be a preventive tool because they can be applied and then lifted. If there is an invasion by Russia, do you introduce powerful sanctions after we might have already lost several territories?” Zelensky once again asked in January, shortly before the latest round of invasion began. “Once you introduce sanctions, what will Russia do?”
The postbellum sanctions, as Zelensky predicted, do not appear to be making any significant dent in the Russian economy.
“Russia’s economy is estimated to have contracted during the second quarter by less than previously projected, with crude oil and non-energy exports holding up better than expected,” the International Monetary Fund (IMF) explained in its World Economic Outlook report published Tuesday, stating that “the Russian central bank and the Russian policymakers have been able to stave off a banking panic or financial meltdown when the sanctions were first imposed.”
Energy prices, it added, are “providing an enormous amount of revenues to the Russian economy.”
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