President Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a plea to President Donald Trump to personally visit Ukraine and see the impact of the war himself, claiming that others simply can’t understand what’s happening without witnessing it first-hand.
Ukraine’s President Zelensky has appealed to President Donald Trump to visit Ukraine, and argued that figures like Vice President JD Vance, Trump envoy Keith Kellogg, and United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio can’t understand Ukraine without seeing the battlefield.
Asked whether he would invite Trump to Ukraine, Zelensky said in a now-published interview recorded on Friday: “With pleasure. Please. I always wanted very much, that’s what I wanted to do, I did it… I always said that, we want you to come, to come and to see.”
While Zelensky did not outright call Trump or his senior colleagues ignorant, he nevertheless said those who had not been to Ukraine could not understand what is happening there and why.
He continued, “You think you understand what’s happening here, OK, we respect your position… everybody thinks they understand… but please. Before any kind of decisions, any kind of format of negotiations, come to see people — civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead, wounded or just walking in the streets.”
The conversation with CBS News’ 60 Minutes also featured President Zelensky recalling his Oval Office bust-up in February, and with Vice President JD Vance, in particular, when the Ukrainian shot back at crticisms from the VP: “Have you ever been to Ukraine, have you seen what problems we have? Come once”.
Vance retorted that foreign leaders visiting Ukraine are shown a “propaganda tour” of events, a Potemkin version carefully curated for their benefit. Months later, this evidently remains a sore spot for Zelensky, who replied in the 60 Minutes interview: “We see this war differently.
“I am in Ukraine and I understand what happened. But he does not understand at all. He speaks in the same language as the Russians… We will not prepare anything [for a VIP visit], it will not be theatre, with actors in the streets. We don’t do this, we don’t need it. You can go where you want in any city that has been under attack”.
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging discussion, Zelensky expressed that he feels “one hundred per cent hatred for Putin”, but nevertheless said he supported a peace process even with a Russian president who kills Ukrainian children, and warned that without American support, Ukraine stands to “suffer a lot of human and territorial losses”.
Read the full article here
