Zelenski explains the tense meeting with Trump in an interview in ‘Time’: “In that conversation, he was defending the dignity of Ukraine”
President Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, explained the one he held at the end of February with the US president Donald Trump, at the White House, in an extensive interview published on Tuesday in Time.
Following the advice of its trust environment, Zelenski has avoided speaking in public of the meeting, in an attempt not to aggravate the diplomatic crisis. In the interview, the Ukrainian president reveals that he had taken several gifts for his first meeting in the White House with the Republican leader. One of them was the Oleksandr Usyk boxer belt, world boxing champion of heavyweights. When he took a seat in the Oval Office, Zelenski placed his belt on an auxiliary table to his right, with the intention of delivering it to Trump in front of journalists. However, when the meeting began before the cameras, President Ukraine delivered another gift to his host: a folder with photographs of Ukrainian war prisoners after his captivity in Russia. Some of them were very emaciated, others showed signs of torture.
Those images, according to some American officials, marked the moment when the meeting was twisted. But Zelenski insists that he has not regretted his decision to show those photos. “[Trump] It has family, loved ones, children. You have to feel the things anyone feels, “he says in the interview.” What I wanted to show were my values. But then the conversation was in another direction. ”
“Why did Ukrainians defend themselves at the beginning of this war? For dignity,” says Zelenski. “We do not consider ourselves a kind of superpower, but the Ukrainians are very emotional, and when it comes to our sense of dignity, freedom, democracy, our people rises and joins.” What they expected to see in the Oval Office, he maintains, was the proof that the United States remains its ally. “But at that time there was the feeling of not being allies, or not adopting the position of an ally. In that conversation, he was defending the dignity of Ukraine.”
