Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Ukraine, War, Peace, Putin, Trump, NATO, and Freedom

00:00:00.000 | I hope the Kiev airport will open soon, then it will be easier to fly in.

00:00:05.460 | Yes, I think that the war will end and President Trump may be the first leader to travel here

00:00:12.460 | by airplane.

00:00:13.460 | I think it would be symbolic by airplane.

00:00:16.620 | Again, January 25th, around that date, right?

00:00:19.660 | Flying in, meeting the Air Force One.

00:00:21.940 | That would be cool.

00:00:23.460 | There is a perception of corruption.

00:00:25.980 | People like Donald Trump and Elon Musk really care about fighting corruption.

00:00:32.900 | What can you say to them to gain their trust that the money is going towards this fight

00:00:38.700 | for freedom, towards the war effort?

00:00:41.420 | In most cases, we did not receive money, we received weapons.

00:00:46.220 | And where we saw risks that something could be happening with weapons, we crack down hard

00:00:51.320 | on everyone.

00:00:52.320 | Believe me, this is not only about Ukraine, everywhere along the supply chain, there are

00:00:57.860 | some or other people and companies who want to make money.

00:01:02.940 | They try to make money on the war.

00:01:04.980 | We did not profit from the war.

00:01:06.800 | If we caught someone, believe me, we crack down hard on them.

00:01:11.780 | And we did that.

00:01:13.180 | We did that.

00:01:14.380 | And we will continue to do so, because to this day, when someone says that Ukraine was

00:01:21.140 | selling weapons, and by the way, Russia was the one pushing this narrative, we always

00:01:27.160 | responded, our soldiers would kill such people with their own hands without any trial.

00:01:34.880 | Do you honestly think anyone could steal weapons by the truckload when we ourselves don't have

00:01:39.820 | enough on the front lines?

00:01:41.460 | And yet we have to provide proof to defend ourselves.

00:01:44.620 | Because when there's an abundance of such misinformation, distrust starts to grow.

00:01:51.340 | And you're right, people listen to various media outlets see this and lose faith in you.

00:01:56.980 | In the end, you lose trust.

00:01:59.860 | And with it, you lose support.

00:02:02.900 | Therefore, believe me, we are fighting more against disinformation than against particular

00:02:09.260 | cases, although I still emphasize once again, at the everyday level, such things are still

00:02:17.180 | important.

00:02:18.180 | We catch these, these people, and we fight them.

00:02:23.420 | As if Putin wants to sit down and talk, but Ukraine does not.

00:02:30.620 | This is not true.

00:02:31.620 | I think that, yes, he is, in fact, ready to talk.

00:02:35.260 | Did you talk to him?

00:02:36.420 | On the phone or what?

00:02:37.980 | How do you normally talk to him?

00:02:39.420 | I don't know.

00:02:40.500 | Normally by the sea.

00:02:41.500 | The same as with you.

00:02:42.540 | He invites you to the sea with me.

00:02:44.660 | Just the three of us.

00:02:45.660 | No, no.

00:02:46.660 | One of us may drown.

00:02:47.980 | Who?

00:02:48.980 | Are you good at swimming?

00:02:49.980 | Yes, I am a good swimmer.

00:02:50.980 | You're a good swimmer.

00:02:51.980 | Well, if you think that the president of a country is completely crazy, it is really

00:02:58.140 | hard to come to an agreement with him.

00:03:01.220 | You have to look at him as a serious person who loves his country and loves the people

00:03:07.260 | in his country.

00:03:08.300 | And he conducts, yes, destructive military actions.

00:03:10.380 | Who are you talking about now?

00:03:11.820 | Who loves his country?

00:03:13.400 | Putin.

00:03:14.400 | Do you think he doesn't love his country?

00:03:16.620 | No.

00:03:17.940 | What is his country?

00:03:18.940 | He happened to consider Ukraine his country.

00:03:21.520 | What is his country?

00:03:23.180 | When do you think there will be presidential elections in Ukraine?

00:03:29.660 | The following is a conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.

00:03:36.940 | It was an intense, raw, and heartfelt conversation, my goal for which was to understand and to

00:03:43.300 | do all I can to push for peace.

00:03:47.780 | Please allow me to say a few words, first about language, then about the president,

00:03:52.460 | and finally about history.

00:03:55.020 | Please skip ahead straight to our conversation if you like.

00:03:59.460 | We spoke in a mix of languages, continuously switching from Ukrainian to Russian to English.

00:04:05.660 | Although the interpreter was barely hanging on, it was indeed, in many ways, a wild ride

00:04:12.940 | of a conversation.

00:04:14.500 | As the president said, the first of many, "Language, like many other things in a time

00:04:20.660 | of war, is a big deal.

00:04:23.300 | We had a choice, speak in Russian, Ukrainian, or English.

00:04:27.380 | The president does speak some English, but he's far from fluent in it, and I sadly don't

00:04:32.780 | speak Ukrainian, yet."

00:04:35.820 | So Russian is the only common language we're both fluent in.

00:04:39.620 | In case you don't know, the Russian language is one that the president speaks fluently

00:04:43.820 | and was his primary language for most of his life.

00:04:47.140 | It's the language I also speak fluently, to the degree I speak any language fluently,

00:04:53.900 | as does a large fraction of the Ukrainian population.

00:04:58.380 | So the most dynamic and powerful conversation between us would be in Russian, without an

00:05:03.540 | interpreter who, in this case, added about a 2-3 second delay, and frankly, translated

00:05:10.420 | partially and poorly, for me at least, taking away my ability to feel the humor, the wit,

00:05:17.340 | the brilliance, the pain, the anger, the humanity of the person sitting before me, that I could

00:05:22.940 | clearly feel when he was speaking fluently in the language I understand, Russian.

00:05:29.380 | But all that said, war changes everything.

00:05:33.660 | The Ukrainian language has become a symbol of the Ukrainian people's fight for freedom

00:05:38.460 | and independence.

00:05:41.060 | So we had a difficult choice of three languages, and faced with that choice, we said yes to

00:05:47.620 | all three, to the consternation and dismay of the translators.

00:05:54.020 | We make captions and voice-over audio tracks available in English, Ukrainian, and Russian,

00:06:00.980 | so you can listen either to a version that is all one language, or to the original mixed-language

00:06:06.780 | version with subtitles in your preferred language.

00:06:09.780 | The default is English overdub.

00:06:12.900 | On YouTube, you can switch between language audio tracks by clicking the settings gear

00:06:17.500 | icon, then clicking Audio Track, and then selecting the language you prefer, English,

00:06:25.660 | Ukrainian, Russian.

00:06:28.500 | To listen to the original mixed-language version, please select the English-UK audio track.

00:06:36.540 | Big thank you to Eleven Labs for their help with overdubbing using a mix of AI and humans.

00:06:43.060 | We will continue to explore how to break down the barriers that language creates, with AI

00:06:49.140 | and otherwise.

00:06:50.660 | This is a difficult but important endeavor.

00:06:52.980 | Language, after all, is much more than a cold sequence of facts and logic statements.

00:06:58.740 | There are words, when spoken in the right sequence and at the right time, that can shake

00:07:05.020 | the world, and turn the ties of history, that can start and end wars.

00:07:12.940 | Great leaders can find those words, and great translators can help these words reverberate

00:07:18.900 | to the outskirts of a divided civilization.

00:07:22.760 | On another note, let me say that President Zelensky is a truly remarkable person, and

00:07:28.500 | a historic figure.

00:07:31.020 | I say this as somebody who deeply understands the geopolitical complexity and history of

00:07:36.100 | the region.

00:07:37.260 | I am from this region.

00:07:39.860 | My parents were both born in Ukraine, Kiev, and Kharkiv, both my grandfathers too.

00:07:45.860 | I was born in Tajikistan, and lived for a time there, then in Kiev, then Moscow, then

00:07:53.340 | United States.

00:07:55.500 | And while I am now, for almost 30 years, and to the day I die, I am a proud American, my

00:08:03.020 | family roots grow deep in the soil of nations that comprised the Soviet Union, including

00:08:09.300 | Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Tajikistan.

00:08:13.020 | I've gotten to know and have spoken for hours with members of the President's team and people

00:08:17.260 | close to him.

00:08:18.700 | I spoke to hundreds of Ukrainians since 2022, including soldiers, civilians, politicians,

00:08:25.700 | artists, religious leaders, journalists, economists, historians, and technologists.

00:08:31.340 | I've listened to hundreds of hours of programs that both support and criticize the President,

00:08:36.980 | in Ukraine, in Russia, in the United States.

00:08:40.620 | I've read countless books about this war, and the long arc of history that led up to

00:08:45.820 | it.

00:08:47.300 | If forced to recommend two, at this moment, I would say the "Russo-Ukrainian War" by

00:08:52.140 | Serhii Plohi, and "The Showman" by Simon Schuster, which is a good personal behind-the-scenes

00:08:59.700 | biography of the President, focused on 2022.

00:09:03.820 | But there are many, many more.

00:09:06.260 | This is why I can comfortably say that he is a truly singular and remarkable human being.

00:09:13.340 | It was an honor and pleasure to talk with him, on and off the mic.

00:09:18.420 | Now, it is true that I plan to travel to Moscow and to speak with President Vladimir Putin.

00:09:26.140 | And I hope to be back in Kiev as well, as President Zelensky said this was our first

00:09:30.860 | of many more meetings.

00:09:32.860 | In all these cases, I seek to do my small part in pushing for peace.

00:09:38.340 | In doing all this, I'm deeply grateful for the trust people have given me, on all sides.

00:09:44.700 | For the people attacking me, sometimes lying about me, for the critics in the stands, chanting

00:09:51.600 | the latest slogans of the mass hysteria machine, like the sheep and animal farm.

00:09:57.300 | I love you too.

00:09:59.360 | And I assure you that drawing lines between good and evil on a world map is much easier

00:10:06.540 | than seeing that line between good and evil in every human being, including you and me.

00:10:14.260 | This is what I try to do.

00:10:15.940 | I'm simply a human being who seeks to find and surface the humanity in others.

00:10:21.200 | And as I've said, no amount of money, fame, power, access can buy my opinion or my integrity.

00:10:30.620 | Now, finally, please allow me to briefly overview some history to give background for several

00:10:37.340 | topics that President Zelensky references in this conversation.

00:10:41.100 | I recommend my conversation with Sergei Plouhi and many others about the history of the region.

00:10:45.940 | But here, let me start with 1991, when Ukraine declared its independence and the Soviet Union

00:10:52.620 | collapsed.

00:10:54.500 | From this point on, Russia-Ukraine relations were defined in large part by whether Ukraine

00:10:59.940 | aligned more with Russia or with the West, meaning Europe, United States, NATO, and so

00:11:06.180 | on.

00:11:07.180 | In 2004, with the Orange Revolution, a pro-Western candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, became president.

00:11:14.180 | In 2010, it went the other way, a pro-Russia candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, became president.

00:11:22.280 | The internal tensions grew, and in 2013, Euromaidan protests broke out over Yanukovych's decision

00:11:28.700 | to suspend talks with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia.

00:11:34.400 | This set forward a chain of important events in 2014.

00:11:37.740 | On the politics front, Yanukovych was ousted and fled to Russia, leading to the election

00:11:42.940 | of a pro-Western president.

00:11:45.140 | Also, in 2014, on the war front, Russia annexed Crimea and war broke out in the Donbass region

00:11:52.420 | of eastern Ukraine, which eventually killed over 14,000 people and continued all the way

00:11:58.660 | to 2022, when, on February 24, 2022, Russian forces initiated a full-scale invasion of

00:12:08.220 | Ukraine.

00:12:09.940 | This is when the world started to really pay attention.

00:12:13.820 | Now some history of peace talks.

00:12:15.860 | Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidency in 2019, and he discusses in this conversation the

00:12:22.100 | ceasefire agreements he made with Vladimir Putin in 2019, which was one of many attempts

00:12:27.980 | at peace, from the two Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015, to a series of ceasefire agreements

00:12:35.500 | in 2018, 19, and 20, all of which failed, in part or in whole.

00:12:43.740 | All this shows just how difficult ceasefire and peace negotiations are.

00:12:48.380 | But they are not impossible.

00:12:50.760 | It is always worth trying, over and over again, to find the path to peace.

00:12:55.720 | I believe that Presidents Zelensky, Putin, and Trump should meet soon after January 20th

00:13:01.940 | this year and give everything they got to negotiate a ceasefire and security guarantees

00:13:08.580 | that pave the way for long-lasting peace.

00:13:12.020 | We discussed several ideas for this in this conversation.

00:13:16.480 | As I said, this was one of my main goals here, to push for peace.

00:13:21.660 | This trip to Kiev and this conversation was a truly special moment for me in my life.

00:13:27.580 | It is one I will never forget.

00:13:30.420 | So to reflect, I say a few more words and answer some questions at the very end if you

00:13:34.700 | like to listen.

00:13:35.700 | But here, let me say thank you, to everyone, for your support over the years.

00:13:42.820 | It means the world.

00:13:45.760 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and now, dear friends, here's the President of Ukraine,

00:13:52.320 | Volodymyr Zelensky.

00:13:55.400 | If we can explain why the Ukrainian language is very important, our conversation will be

00:13:59.060 | most effective and impactful if we speak in Russian.

00:14:01.380 | I speak Russian perfectly, of course, and I understand everything you are talking about.

00:14:05.660 | However, I can't respond in Russian the entire interview.

00:14:09.700 | It's because this is how it is today.

00:14:11.920 | I am not making anything up.

00:14:14.140 | You can see it all for yourself.

00:14:15.840 | You can feel and hear it.

00:14:17.340 | Today, there were 73 missile attacks against us, and people were killed.

00:14:22.100 | There were over 100 drones today, and this is a daily occurrence.

00:14:28.280 | The people who attack us, they speak Russian.

00:14:32.420 | They attack people who were only recently told that this was actually in defense of

00:14:36.980 | Russian-speaking people.

00:14:39.080 | And this is why I respect neither the leader or director of today's Russia, nor the people.

00:14:46.440 | I just, that's it.

00:14:49.280 | And I don't think that you can just pretend that nothing's happening and give Putin a

00:14:57.400 | pass once again for saying that we are one people, that we speak one language, et cetera.

00:15:03.560 | They speak the language of weapons, that is a fact, and we are peaceful people.

00:15:09.280 | Peaceful people who want to protect themselves and defend their freedom and their human choice.

00:15:17.040 | You know, at the beginning of the war, I addressed Russians in Russian.

00:15:28.400 | Zero effect.

00:15:30.920 | They're mute.

00:15:33.240 | They do not listen.

00:15:34.840 | They did not listen.

00:15:36.720 | Some are afraid.

00:15:37.720 | Some have other issues.

00:15:38.720 | They have different reasons.

00:15:39.720 | It's like when a person is drowning, drowning, and people walk by because they can't hear

00:15:43.920 | them.

00:15:44.920 | And someone walks on by crying, afraid to save them.

00:15:48.300 | It doesn't change anything for the one drowning.

00:15:51.720 | They need someone to help them.

00:15:53.920 | This is why I honestly despise these people, as they are deaf.

00:15:58.920 | They began the occupation in the supposed defense of the Russian language.

00:16:03.800 | And that's why, with all due respect, I would like to give an interview in Ukrainian.

00:16:09.080 | This is very, this is very important to me.

00:16:14.360 | If there are some points that you want me to explain in Russian, I can certainly do

00:16:22.040 | that.

00:16:23.040 | I can certainly occasionally speak Russian.

00:16:25.200 | But in general, in general, no, I'm not sure that you will understand me completely.

00:16:33.000 | Despite your Ukrainian roots, you are a citizen of the United States, right?

00:16:39.320 | Yes.

00:16:41.120 | That's why I'm surprised that you don't understand.

00:16:46.240 | Well, it was a long time ago.

00:16:47.840 | I understand that it was a long time ago.

00:16:51.080 | Moreover, a lot has changed.

00:16:56.360 | A lot has changed.

00:16:58.880 | If I may please allow me to say this in Russian.

00:17:01.960 | Yes, many things have changed, but I have hope.

00:17:06.840 | I hope that today many Russians will hear this, that Vladimir Putin will hear this,

00:17:11.880 | that the American President Donald Trump and the American people will hear this, that everyone

00:17:16.200 | will hear this.

00:17:17.640 | And yes, Ukrainian language is important symbolically, but what is also important is that we understand

00:17:23.720 | each other well.

00:17:24.720 | For Donald Trump?

00:17:25.720 | Is it important for Donald Trump whether I speak Russian or not?

00:17:29.200 | Yes.

00:17:30.200 | Because unfortunately, and it hurts to admit, but I cannot speak or understand Ukrainian

00:17:34.120 | yet.

00:17:35.120 | So your wit, dynamism, and your humanity will not come through as well and as quickly.

00:17:40.560 | Remember, I need to wait for two to three seconds to hear it.

00:17:44.280 | You have a great sense of humor, great stories.

00:17:48.400 | With an interpreter translating, I simply won't see this, but I understand that it's

00:17:52.760 | painful.

00:17:55.640 | Another reason is that I hoped we could show that even though it is sometimes said that

00:18:01.720 | Russian is banned in Ukraine.

00:18:03.720 | This is not true.

00:18:04.720 | I'm speaking Russian now, right?

00:18:06.680 | We have people who speak Russian.

00:18:08.140 | This is not true, really, it's not.

00:18:10.800 | It's really not true.

00:18:12.760 | We disrespect Russian now because of Russians.

00:18:16.520 | That's all.

00:18:17.520 | When they were saving Russian speakers, they killed Russian speakers.

00:18:21.920 | Many people who actually, many of whom are in the East, right?

00:18:27.360 | In the East, they live, lived in the East.

00:18:30.800 | They destroyed their houses, destroyed their lives.

00:18:33.720 | It's not a rhetorical thing.

00:18:34.760 | It's not all talk and blah, blah, blah.

00:18:36.480 | I don't have time for blah, blah, blah.

00:18:38.240 | Yes, so it's a very, very, very important and sensitive moment.

00:18:43.560 | The message is that we are not one nation.

00:18:46.560 | We are not, you know, the same country.

00:18:49.640 | We're different countries.

00:18:51.360 | Yes, different countries.

00:18:53.240 | And I think what is most important is what we're talking about, not how.

00:19:01.400 | We're speaking about it.

00:19:02.400 | This is what I think.

00:19:03.400 | You're a smart guy.

00:19:04.640 | So you have a lot of experience in dialogue of this kind.

00:19:08.480 | That's why I think you will, you will understand me.

00:19:12.120 | Yeah, I anyway, I think it is far better for Donald Trump to hear my English, not my Russian.

00:19:21.840 | Your English is much better than my Ukrainian.

00:19:24.320 | You're getting better and better.

00:19:25.840 | That's true.

00:19:26.840 | I'm a very honest guy.

00:19:28.840 | That's why I will be very honest with you.

00:19:31.280 | Your Ukrainian is not very good, but we will, but we will work on it.

00:19:35.880 | Yes.

00:19:36.880 | I have many flaws.

00:19:37.880 | That's one of them.

00:19:39.080 | Sometimes I can speak English.

00:19:40.800 | Sometimes as I understand, we can be very flexible, right?

00:19:44.600 | Very flexible.

00:19:45.600 | Spanish, Swahili.

00:19:46.600 | Yeah.

00:19:47.600 | You see?

00:19:48.600 | Yeah.

00:19:49.600 | Javier Molin needs to understand this, so.

00:19:51.480 | By the way, Javier understood me without any words.

00:19:55.440 | The language of love, maybe.

00:19:57.640 | Of respect.

00:19:58.640 | Respect.

00:19:59.640 | I respect him.

00:20:00.640 | I had a great conversation with him.

00:20:02.000 | Really brilliant.

00:20:03.200 | May I sometimes speak Russian and sometimes English?

00:20:05.360 | Yeah, yes.

00:20:06.360 | You can use any language you like.

00:20:08.080 | And I think that's a very good rule for this first meeting between us.

00:20:12.140 | As you said, maybe we will meet in the future for the second time.

00:20:16.240 | Second and third and fourth?

00:20:17.520 | Yeah, this is, this is good.

00:20:19.240 | You can ask questions in the language you'd like, and I will answer in the language I

00:20:23.280 | can.

00:20:24.280 | Well, you said you wanted to meet by the sea at some point.

00:20:27.480 | So for our next meeting, let's meet by the sea.

00:20:30.520 | With pleasure.

00:20:31.520 | Next time, it would be much better to meet by our Ukrainian Black or our Azov Sea.

00:20:37.560 | You know, I've been to a lot of, I have traveled to many cities in Ukraine, but I have never

00:20:42.620 | been to Odessa.

00:20:44.280 | And everyone tells me that, and I don't know why.

00:20:46.200 | You have to.

00:20:47.800 | Can you explain to me why everyone loves Odessa so much?

00:20:50.920 | What's there?

00:20:53.760 | You know, what's in Odessa?

00:20:56.120 | That's how they say it.

00:20:57.120 | What's there?

00:20:58.120 | In Odessa, we've got it all.

00:20:59.120 | Okay.

00:21:00.120 | Well, Odessa, I love Odessa because of its particular temperament.

00:21:06.560 | People have their own, their own accent.

00:21:09.080 | And it's so, there are many nationalities, you know, there are a lot of, a lot of stories.

00:21:14.400 | Authentic Odessa cuisine.

00:21:17.280 | By the way, you know, the cuisine is very different from others.

00:21:21.280 | The dishes are not like any other dishes and everything is very tasty.

00:21:25.200 | Also, there are beautiful people.

00:21:27.600 | And today, you know, you understand people very well, especially after, after the attacks

00:21:37.320 | on Odessa.

00:21:38.880 | You understand what the people are like, just how Odessites are, very Ukrainian.

00:21:44.840 | And that's, that's very cool.

00:21:46.800 | I love Odessa.

00:21:47.880 | I go there several times a year.

00:21:51.000 | I go there several times a year now because, well, now because of strengthening of air

00:21:57.120 | defense systems, because of this grain corridor, et cetera.

00:22:01.120 | I go there more often.

00:22:04.960 | They have the sun there.

00:22:06.660 | They have the sea.

00:22:09.000 | It's Ukraine and it's very cool there.

00:22:10.760 | Well, when you come and visit me in Texas as a guest for the third time.

00:22:16.240 | With pleasure.

00:22:17.240 | Let's do this.

00:22:18.520 | How about you, my friend Joe Rogan and I will go get some Texas barbecue together.

00:22:25.280 | Who will pay?

00:22:27.080 | It's a good question.

00:22:28.080 | Putin.

00:22:29.080 | Putin.

00:22:30.080 | For everything.

00:22:31.080 | He has to pay.

00:22:32.080 | Well, yes.

00:22:33.080 | We'll invite him to.

00:22:34.080 | No, no, no, no.

00:22:35.080 | Okay.

00:22:36.080 | Without him.

00:22:37.080 | Okay.

00:22:38.080 | I get it.

00:22:39.080 | Understood.

00:22:40.080 | But if the Rome statute will be accepted by your government before this moment.

00:22:46.840 | Okay.

00:22:47.960 | By the way, I don't know if you know this, but Joe has a great comedy club in Austin.

00:22:52.240 | Joe Rogan.

00:22:53.240 | Joe Rogan.

00:22:54.240 | Yes.

00:22:55.240 | Yes.

00:22:56.240 | And I think that as a person who respects comedy and stand up comedy, it would be interesting

00:22:59.920 | for you to have a look at.

00:23:00.920 | No, no.

00:23:01.920 | He is.

00:23:02.920 | I know him and I saw a lot of different videos.

00:23:06.120 | He's a very talented person.

00:23:08.480 | So it would be a pleasure if you invite me and I'm able to do it.

00:23:13.880 | I am a little bit busy.

00:23:15.480 | Yeah.

00:23:16.480 | But if I'll be in the United States, I hope that I will have a conversation and a meeting

00:23:22.880 | with president Trump.

00:23:25.040 | And of course, during my visit, if I'll have the time, it would be a pleasure if you'll

00:23:28.720 | invite me.

00:23:29.720 | With pleasure.

00:23:30.720 | You know what?

00:23:32.040 | I will pay.

00:23:33.040 | Good.

00:23:34.040 | Yeah.

00:23:35.040 | You know, I had to think about it, but you are the president.

00:23:37.480 | Yes.

00:23:38.480 | With you.

00:23:39.480 | With pleasure.

00:23:40.480 | When the war is over, please come.

00:23:41.480 | Thanks so much.

00:23:42.480 | And when you're less busy.

00:23:43.480 | Thanks so much.

00:23:44.480 | If we can go back many years, World War II.

00:23:48.200 | Tell me the story of your grandfather who fought in World War II.

00:23:52.560 | My grandfather, he graduated from the military, military academy.

00:24:00.680 | And from the very beginning of the war, he went to fight.

00:24:04.040 | He was in the infantry and he fought through the entire war.

00:24:08.360 | He had many wounds.

00:24:10.800 | As they used to say back then, his chest is covered in medals.

00:24:14.800 | And it's true.

00:24:15.800 | He had more than 30.

00:24:18.160 | Yes, more than 30.

00:24:20.520 | He was the kind of man.

00:24:22.000 | He was such, he was such a serious man.

00:24:27.960 | I loved him very much.

00:24:30.760 | And we had a very close relationship.

00:24:34.560 | He didn't like to tell details about the war.

00:24:37.760 | He never, he never boasted, although I asked him as a boy would, how many fascists did

00:24:47.280 | you kill?

00:24:48.280 | He never talked about it.

00:24:49.820 | He believed that the war was a great, a great tragedy, a tragedy for everyone.

00:25:00.360 | And Ukraine was occupied and it was a tragedy for Ukraine, a tragedy for Europe and a tragedy

00:25:07.880 | for the Jewish people.

00:25:10.760 | His own brothers, his entire family were executed.

00:25:16.840 | They were tortured by fascists who had occupied Ukraine and their village.

00:25:25.800 | His father was the head of the village and he was killed.

00:25:31.960 | They were shot.

00:25:34.320 | It was a mass, a mass grave, right?

00:25:39.480 | Yes.

00:25:40.480 | It was a communal burial.

00:25:41.480 | Some of them were killed outright and others were, they were buried alive.

00:25:47.480 | His four brothers, they all went to war.

00:25:50.600 | As soon as the war began, they were all there.

00:25:54.900 | He was the only one who had a military education and they all died in the war.

00:26:01.820 | He was the only one who came back.

00:26:04.020 | He had nobody.

00:26:06.300 | He came back and he found, found my grandmother, his future wife, and she was, she managed,

00:26:17.160 | what was it called then?

00:26:18.400 | I don't know.

00:26:19.400 | They don't have them anymore.

00:26:20.560 | It was a child care facility, an orphanage, so to speak, a place where orphans lived.

00:26:29.840 | Children who, who don't have parents, children of war.

00:26:35.120 | And she managed this child care facility with difficult children, as they used to call them,

00:26:41.480 | difficult children who went through the war, who saw their parents killed.

00:26:46.440 | And this is how they met because these difficult children, they, well, sometimes behave differently.

00:26:55.840 | They could steal something, do something bad.

00:26:59.400 | There were many, many children in the orphanage.

00:27:05.400 | Yes, that's how she met my grandfather.

00:27:09.260 | And I loved him very much.

00:27:13.720 | And I think that my grandfather, frankly, would never have believed that this war is

00:27:21.680 | possible.

00:27:22.800 | He would never have believed it because he worked in the police after the war.

00:27:27.720 | He was a colonel.

00:27:29.380 | He worked in criminal investigation all his life.

00:27:35.640 | So he fought with bandits all his life after the Second World War.

00:27:44.960 | But also, I believe he fought for justice all his life.

00:27:49.820 | And we all lived in one apartment.

00:27:53.580 | And even after his death, I lived with both of my grandmothers and my parents, two grandmothers

00:28:01.000 | who both lost their husbands.

00:28:03.760 | Both of them died.

00:28:05.400 | Well, it was an ordinary family, an ordinary family that lived like everyone lived back

00:28:11.640 | then in the Soviet Union.

00:28:14.120 | And even after the Soviets in the 90s, we lived in one apartment all together.

00:28:21.520 | What else is there to say?

00:28:23.780 | But I think the most important thing was values, respect.

00:28:30.000 | They gave me an education.

00:28:32.120 | My parents gave me an education.

00:28:34.200 | No one left me money or apartments, so I didn't inherit anything material.

00:28:40.080 | But I believe that our real inheritance is here in our minds and in our hearts.

00:28:46.480 | I believe that.

00:28:47.480 | There's a one second delay.

00:28:57.160 | So if, I'm sorry, if you tell a joke, I will laugh about one, two, or three seconds later.

00:29:04.680 | There's a delay.

00:29:06.360 | So ordinary family, but not an ordinary time, World War II.

00:29:12.600 | World War II, speaking of mass graves, I was at Bobinyar yesterday.

00:29:17.640 | A large part of my family died there.

00:29:20.120 | In moments like this, such a place serves as a stark reminder of the profound historical

00:29:24.640 | gravity of the Second World War.

00:29:28.360 | I remember, I remember this song from my youth.

00:29:32.020 | On June 22nd at four o'clock, Kiev was bombed and the war began.

00:29:39.080 | I always wondered how it would feel to live in a moment when everything changed.

00:29:44.480 | The path of humanity completely shifts in a single moment.

00:29:48.480 | Just like that.

00:29:49.480 | What do you think, what do you think about that moment in 1941?

00:29:56.120 | Now after the 2022 invasion, how do you perceive the Second World War after you have witnessed

00:30:00.960 | all of it?

00:30:02.880 | Well, well, firstly, the war actually started earlier.

00:30:11.040 | It started here in Ukraine.

00:30:13.320 | Kiev was bombed, as you quoted.

00:30:16.560 | But the war had already begun before that.

00:30:20.000 | And I think, I perceived it as a start of the full-scale invasion.

00:30:28.680 | Well, I think it's hard.

00:30:35.480 | It's hard to understand why nobody wants to listen, look at, and analyze history.

00:30:44.680 | War, the rise of fascism and Nazism, the emergence of Hitler, Goebbels, and their entire team.

00:30:55.680 | At the time, this wasn't just about one party or even one country.

00:31:00.760 | It was essentially a wave, a wave of hatred, a wave of one race, one race above the rest.

00:31:17.400 | They were, in fact, constructing and ultimately implemented a theory around this idea, later

00:31:24.680 | seizing Europe.

00:31:26.920 | They created a theory of one nation, one race, one world, their world.

00:31:33.640 | Of course, this idea is absolutely senseless, but it has become radicalized over the years

00:31:40.280 | and even gained support.

00:31:42.440 | A vision of one world, and in principle, the so-called Russian world, the ideology Putin

00:31:49.560 | promotes and imposes, it wasn't originally like that.

00:31:54.400 | He was a different person back then, or maybe he was always like this, but his rhetoric

00:31:59.200 | was different.

00:32:00.280 | At the beginning, remember, he talked about the EU and even about Russia's future being

00:32:05.500 | tied to NATO.

00:32:06.560 | There were even talks of joining the European Union, NATO.

00:32:10.020 | He spoke about shared values with the West.

00:32:12.880 | That's how it all sounded back then.

00:32:15.040 | And we must also look at Hitler, who was seriously, before the radical idea of taking over the

00:32:23.640 | whole world, he actually made certain steps, and everyone believed he was helping the economy.

00:32:32.600 | And to be fair, he did take some steps in that direction.

00:32:37.200 | But he was a terrifying person.

00:32:41.000 | None of those actions justify him, nor do they excuse his actions.

00:32:47.160 | And that's why we cannot look at the Second World War as if it started in 1939.

00:32:52.240 | It didn't begin in 1941 either.

00:32:55.040 | We need to draw conclusions.

00:32:56.800 | When did it start?

00:32:58.000 | With the weaknesses of the world.

00:33:01.060 | The division of European states, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, all of this happened before 1941.

00:33:08.400 | People who were more informed, those who dug deeper, whether they were politicians or not,

00:33:15.120 | whether they were from different walks of life, including business, which was different

00:33:22.920 | back then, were speaking about all of this.

00:33:27.200 | Hitler won't stop.

00:33:29.160 | There'll be a world war.

00:33:33.160 | Hitler will destroy nations, nations.

00:33:37.560 | And that's what happened.

00:33:38.860 | Someone looked the other way.

00:33:40.560 | What I told you about.

00:33:41.920 | Europe was sinking then.

00:33:43.200 | I gave you an example of it.

00:33:45.620 | But the whole world looked the other way and didn't pay attention and said, "No, we can

00:33:50.640 | negotiate with him.

00:33:52.560 | I'm telling you he is okay.

00:33:54.000 | We can negotiate with him.

00:33:55.240 | He's just more right-leaning."

00:33:56.440 | Or, "It does not matter what they said.

00:33:58.800 | He's just, he's just pro, very pro-nationalist."

00:34:05.320 | This is all nonsense.

00:34:08.480 | And this is not the first time.

00:34:11.040 | And Hitler isn't the first such case in history.

00:34:15.400 | We're dealing with a person who is allowed to stick to this desire to destroy.

00:34:27.560 | He was consumed by it and enjoying it.

00:34:30.600 | And what happened to Hitler?

00:34:32.080 | Now what about Putin?

00:34:34.240 | This invasion was also at four in the morning, around four in the morning.

00:34:39.320 | There were missile strikes on Ukraine.

00:34:41.960 | This is the same.

00:34:42.960 | I believe that intentions are also the same, but more on that later.

00:34:47.080 | By the way, you tell me, if this is too long, you can stop me.

00:34:53.280 | Never long enough.

00:34:54.280 | It's beautiful.

00:34:55.280 | Okay.

00:34:56.280 | So it happened here around four in the morning.

00:35:02.520 | For this, I must honestly say, everyone said something, predicted something, et cetera.

00:35:10.080 | But I asked only for one thing, primarily from the United States.

00:35:15.000 | If you are sure, if you have the evidence, if you talk to him and he tells you that there'll

00:35:19.600 | be an invasion, if all this scares you, I only asked for two things.

00:35:25.360 | Send us weapons, or better yet, strengthen us with preventive measures so there would

00:35:33.720 | be no war.

00:35:35.680 | It wasn't the weapons that I was asking for.

00:35:38.720 | I asked for sanctions.

00:35:40.880 | Intimidate him.

00:35:41.920 | Please don't say that.

00:35:42.920 | If he comes, if he crosses borders, if he kills, we're imposing sanctions.

00:35:48.600 | Well, this is complete bullshit.

00:35:50.640 | Sorry, but really- Oh, I understand this.

00:35:54.800 | Wonderful.

00:35:55.800 | Yes.

00:35:56.800 | I understood one word.

00:35:57.800 | Yeah.

00:35:58.800 | So they did not help?

00:36:02.920 | I believe that no, and this is a fact.

00:36:06.260 | We didn't receive help.

00:36:08.760 | If we assume that words are help, well, then yes, we received a lot of it because there

00:36:15.560 | were plenty of words.

00:36:19.520 | Even more than plenty, yes?

00:36:22.920 | At four in the morning, there were strikes.

00:36:26.600 | Morally, is it possible to prepare for war?

00:36:31.200 | No.

00:36:32.280 | It doesn't happen like you read in books, see in movies, and so on.

00:36:36.400 | What happens to you?

00:36:37.720 | I was just looking at my wife and children.

00:36:41.140 | My children were asleep, but my wife was awake.

00:36:44.560 | There were strikes, missile strikes, we heard them.

00:36:51.320 | To you, as a living person, how can this be?

00:36:57.080 | You just can't fully believe this.

00:37:01.880 | You just don't understand.

00:37:05.000 | Why now, given everything that happened in World War II, when millions of people died?

00:37:15.480 | None of it mattered, still at four, at four in the morning, around 4, 340, 345, remember?

00:37:23.240 | Around this time, yes, there were missile strikes.

00:37:26.600 | And later, by the way, a few days after, after the first days of the war, I spoke with Lukashenko

00:37:37.640 | on the phone, and he apologized.

00:37:44.280 | And he said that it was not me.

00:37:47.080 | Missiles were launched from my territory, and Putin was the one launching them.

00:37:52.640 | These are his words.

00:37:54.240 | I have witnesses.

00:37:57.040 | And I apologize, he said.

00:37:59.040 | But believe me, that's what he told me.

00:38:01.320 | "Vladia, this is not me.

00:38:04.280 | I'm not in charge," he told me.

00:38:05.880 | "I'm not in charge.

00:38:07.040 | These are just missiles.

00:38:08.040 | This is Putin."

00:38:09.040 | I told him, "Don't do that.

00:38:10.920 | This was done without me.

00:38:13.280 | That's it."

00:38:14.280 | He just, on the phone, I remember this conversation.

00:38:18.800 | I told him that I believed.

00:38:21.280 | I told him, "You are a murderer too, I'm just saying."

00:38:26.760 | And he told me, "You must understand, you can't fight the Russians."

00:38:31.480 | I told him that we never fought them.

00:38:33.240 | I said, "It's war.

00:38:35.400 | The missiles came from your land, from Belarus.

00:38:38.640 | How did you allow this?"

00:38:40.560 | Then he replied, "All right, retaliate then."

00:38:44.480 | I still remember him telling me, "Hit the refinery.

00:38:49.520 | You know how much I care about it."

00:38:51.040 | "Moser Oil Refinery?

00:38:52.120 | Is that it?"

00:38:53.120 | "Can't recall."

00:38:54.120 | "Moser Oil Refinery?"

00:38:55.120 | I told him, "What are you on about?

00:38:58.040 | What retaliation?"

00:38:59.040 | "Forgive me, Vladia."

00:39:01.400 | "Yes."

00:39:02.400 | "Yes."

00:39:03.400 | "Yes."

00:39:04.400 | "What time was it?

00:39:05.400 | Five in the morning?"

00:39:06.400 | "No, no, no.

00:39:07.400 | This was during the first or maybe the second day.

00:39:09.600 | Second or third day of the war."

00:39:10.600 | "Ah, I see."

00:39:11.600 | "Yes.

00:39:12.600 | Well, after that, I went back home.

00:39:15.960 | I was home with my children, with my wife.

00:39:20.960 | I just went to my wife very quickly that night, at four o'clock.

00:39:24.360 | Yes, and just told her, 'Get the children, get ready.

00:39:28.080 | You'll probably need to go to my office very soon.'

00:39:31.200 | And I left.

00:39:32.200 | That's it.

00:39:33.840 | At this moment, you're no longer a father.'

00:39:39.640 | What happened to me, unfortunately, because I believe that this is… and not only do

00:39:46.460 | I believe, I understand, especially now that all of this is the most important thing, because

00:39:52.800 | your country is your family.

00:39:57.120 | The strength is in your family.

00:39:59.120 | This is the most important thing, and I'm the president, and therefore, I had to stop

00:40:03.880 | being a father in my own family.

00:40:06.760 | And my wife had to do everything.

00:40:09.240 | She had to do everything regarding children, regarding safety, and I had to deal with the

00:40:15.960 | state because I'm the president, and this is my duty.

00:40:20.640 | And I, by the way, am taking this very seriously.

00:40:26.840 | I went to the office, and here we are now.

00:40:29.400 | You're very welcome.'

00:40:30.400 | Well, at that moment, on February 24th, 2022, everything changed again, just like in June

00:40:38.040 | 1941.

00:40:39.800 | Everything changed.

00:40:41.720 | And history took a turn.

00:40:43.240 | The history of humanity took a turn.

00:40:45.960 | And for you, too.

00:40:47.840 | You were the president.

00:40:50.560 | You were talking about fighting corruption, about the country's freedom, about interesting

00:40:56.400 | and innovative reforms.

00:40:59.440 | But that morning of February 22nd, everything changed.

00:41:03.480 | Could you tell me about that morning, the details of your actions, when you had to quickly

00:41:11.280 | make difficult decisions?

00:41:14.800 | What was the process for you?

00:41:16.380 | How did you make these decisions?

00:41:18.280 | Did you discuss them with people you trust to understand how to respond to this invasion

00:41:25.960 | in every technical, political, and military aspect?

00:41:31.400 | What was the process for you?

00:41:32.680 | How did you make the decision?

00:41:35.280 | According to our legislation, in principle, I'm the supreme commander of the armed forces

00:41:41.840 | of Ukraine.

00:41:42.840 | So I had to give corresponding orders.

00:41:45.760 | Yes, I have a military office.

00:41:48.040 | And then later there was a military headquarters where all key people gathered.

00:41:52.100 | This is not only about the military, it's about energy, et cetera, all key things.

00:41:56.200 | But at that moment, I made the decisions quickly and without a doubt.

00:42:04.120 | And I cannot say that I am just that kind of person.

00:42:07.760 | I'm just a living person who believed that if help is needed right now, to help evacuate

00:42:15.640 | people, help with children, several cities were blocked.

00:42:20.560 | I was only thinking about how to deliver food there within a day.

00:42:27.200 | We did a lot of things, although we understood that they, in fact, occupied part of our state.

00:42:40.080 | And we distributed weapons to people.

00:42:47.000 | That's how it was.

00:42:50.120 | Police came and simply distributed weapons to people so that they could defend the capital

00:42:56.120 | to ordinary people just on the street, to ordinary people who understood that if the

00:43:03.640 | Russians entered the city, then we would have the same thing that's happening in other cities

00:43:09.520 | per the information we received.

00:43:13.600 | Thanks to digitalization, by the way, we had very good digitalization before this.

00:43:19.560 | And we preserved a lot.

00:43:21.200 | And even when they were surrounding certain cities, a lot of things still worked.

00:43:28.480 | The banking system, the Internet, we had television.

00:43:32.500 | And thanks to this, I made several decisions to ensure that people are united and have

00:43:39.200 | all the information.

00:43:42.120 | Russia is very good at spreading large scale disinformation.

00:43:46.880 | Fortunately, I have two decades of experience, two decades of experience managing a production

00:43:56.760 | studio, TV channels, and large media resources.

00:44:01.880 | I understood that we needed to build an information network very quickly.

00:44:08.520 | Thanks to this, I began to address the people constantly.

00:44:11.800 | This happened several times, three to five times a day.

00:44:15.640 | In fact, I became that information source for people who were in cities that were cut

00:44:25.080 | off from other information.

00:44:28.200 | And it was very important for me to keep all things digital, to keep the Internet, to stay

00:44:34.840 | in touch with everyone, with all the people.

00:44:39.000 | Actually, that's the contact we had, and then we also built a media platform where

00:44:46.480 | we had all the news agencies, agencies of Ukraine.

00:44:51.600 | And this network was called Marathon.

00:44:54.400 | And it was also very important for the people to trust us.

00:44:58.680 | And people had to receive information.

00:45:00.760 | Why?

00:45:01.760 | There were waves.

00:45:03.720 | There were waves of Russian on the first day who said he ran away.

00:45:10.360 | I had to go out into the street.

00:45:12.840 | I left the office and went outside.

00:45:15.120 | I had to do this because I was showing that this was no green screen, you know, to show

00:45:19.900 | that it was the street, not some digital, some digital manipulation.

00:45:25.920 | I mean, I did these things.

00:45:27.600 | Then I touched various objects.

00:45:29.680 | Now people might think that these are small things, but I was actually showing that I

00:45:35.960 | was in a real place.

00:45:37.760 | All of this had an impact.

00:45:39.160 | I was absolutely sure of my actions.

00:45:42.760 | And these contacts, several contacts.

00:45:45.320 | And then I spoke to the Russians.

00:45:47.720 | I addressed Russians.

00:45:48.720 | I really did.

00:45:50.120 | And then only after that, I gathered.

00:45:52.360 | It was the first day when I invited all of the journalists here, wasn't it?

00:45:57.680 | It was on the first day, I think, well, not here, here, to the press center in this building.

00:46:05.280 | I talked to journalists.

00:46:08.000 | I asked them not to leave because we needed weapons.

00:46:12.240 | At that moment, they were handing out rifles to people.

00:46:16.880 | And for me, journalists and media platforms were essential voices.

00:46:22.080 | There were various journalists from different countries here and they were essentially stuck.

00:46:29.400 | And I asked them for contacts, those who had access to Russians, Belarusians, Kazakhs who

00:46:37.600 | understood everything, the same information.

00:46:40.700 | And I spoke to them.

00:46:42.860 | And I spoke to them and spoke in Russian.

00:46:45.040 | I told them, you must stop Putin.

00:46:49.400 | This is terrible.

00:46:50.400 | This is horror.

00:46:51.400 | You must stop him.

00:46:52.880 | And if you stand up now, if you speak out, and if you go out into the streets, this was

00:46:57.520 | very important.

00:46:58.520 | I spoke to them in Russian to show them that there was no problem and that all of these

00:47:03.480 | pretexts were made up.

00:47:08.360 | This is why it's so painful to talk about the Russian language too, because, look, if

00:47:13.360 | a person does not want to listen, they will not listen no matter what language we speak.

00:47:19.120 | I disagree with you here.

00:47:21.400 | I think and hope that many people in Russia will hear us today.

00:47:27.480 | They blocked YouTube recently.

00:47:30.320 | Are you aware of this?

00:47:31.820 | In their country?

00:47:32.820 | I know.

00:47:33.820 | And I simply guarantee that this conversation will travel fast on the Internet.

00:47:38.720 | Everyone will hear you.

00:47:39.720 | They will hear you.

00:47:41.640 | Including the president of Russia will hear you.

00:47:43.760 | This is why I have hope.

00:47:46.800 | He is actually deaf, even if he speaks to you.

00:47:50.360 | He is deaf by his very nature.

00:47:53.560 | Do you understand the difference?

00:47:55.720 | You know, for instance, when you talk to Musk, you're talking to an innovator, a scientist

00:48:08.080 | about rockets.

00:48:09.560 | You talk about how to save on costs and how they land.

00:48:14.400 | On the other hand, Putin doesn't launch rockets to save money, but to kill people.

00:48:19.560 | Do you think you can talk to Putin about technology?

00:48:25.120 | Your guys were interviewing him and he told them about tribal history.

00:48:32.200 | Do you understand?

00:48:34.120 | Imagine a Russian man in his country listening to him.

00:48:37.620 | You know what Musk is about?

00:48:39.560 | Technology, Mars, artificial intelligence.

00:48:42.400 | And this guy Putin is standing there, bare assed, pontificating about tribes.

00:48:47.880 | You've got to understand.

00:48:50.240 | You think that when you do interviews, like Mr. Tucker, who did an interview there, that

00:48:56.360 | you're about to make them friends.

00:48:59.800 | How could you?

00:49:02.320 | What does this have to do with friends?

00:49:04.800 | He's different.

00:49:06.760 | He is simply different.

00:49:09.600 | But it's still necessary.

00:49:10.600 | A mammoth stands before you.

00:49:13.840 | By the way, I must say that when you said bare assed, it was not translated.

00:49:18.200 | Could the interpreter please translate?

00:49:20.080 | This is so that you can understand.

00:49:21.600 | Now he explained everything to me.

00:49:22.800 | I understand.

00:49:23.800 | Yeah?

00:49:24.800 | That's great.

00:49:25.800 | Now I fully understand.

00:49:26.800 | That's great.

00:49:27.800 | But we still need to talk.

00:49:28.800 | One should always speak with someone who listens.

00:49:31.440 | And you must speak when you know that this will benefit you, bring peace and calm to

00:49:38.200 | the world, not the other way around.

00:49:42.160 | I love President Trump's message when he speaks.

00:49:46.880 | I think that we share a position on peace through strength.

00:49:51.660 | That is very important.

00:49:53.080 | It means that if you are strong, you can speak.

00:49:58.520 | And we need to be strong.

00:50:00.600 | And Ukraine has to be strong, strong enough.

00:50:04.760 | Otherwise, what for?

00:50:06.960 | So he, you, you know who, like, like Voldemort, who must, who must not be named.

00:50:19.120 | Yes, he's, he's like Voldemort.

00:50:22.240 | He thrives, subsists and lives on being subjectivized instead of isolation.

00:50:30.440 | He is offered to step out into the light.

00:50:34.040 | He's darkness personified, and you offer him, as it were, to be subjectivized.

00:50:40.320 | Why?

00:50:41.320 | There's only one reason, fear.

00:50:47.160 | And you say, we need to talk, listen.

00:50:50.120 | We need to be in a strong position and not talk, but end the war.

00:50:55.840 | Yes.

00:50:56.840 | Yes, it is possible through dialogue.

00:50:59.000 | You're not opposed to it.

00:51:01.440 | You just need to be in a strong position to make the other person want it.

00:51:07.400 | Do you think he wants to end the war?

00:51:10.820 | That's what you suggested.

00:51:12.140 | I think this is naive.

00:51:13.360 | I'm sorry.

00:51:14.360 | With all due respect, it's naive to think he wants to finish the war.

00:51:18.680 | It's, uh, tell you what the circumstances, sorry for interrupting.

00:51:25.720 | There's something we need.

00:51:26.840 | I think that President Trump not only has will.

00:51:31.320 | He has all these possibilities and it's not just talk.

00:51:35.080 | I really count on him.

00:51:37.080 | And I think that our people really count on him.

00:51:39.960 | So he has enough power to pressure him, to pressure Putin not into wanting to stop it.

00:51:51.920 | No, he will not want to, to pressure him to actually stop it.

00:51:55.880 | That is the difference.

00:51:56.880 | Don't rely on his will, Putin's will to stop.

00:52:00.640 | You won't see it.

00:52:02.680 | That's what I think.

00:52:03.680 | Sorry.

00:52:04.680 | No, sorry.

00:52:05.680 | I interrupted you first.

00:52:07.240 | But what I would want, I do have what some, uh, what some might call a naive dream of

00:52:14.840 | you sitting down with Putin and Trump and negotiating a deal about, uh, a ceasefire

00:52:21.920 | and together finding a path to long-term peace.

00:52:25.140 | And I think this requires strength, requires negotiations.

00:52:32.160 | There are a lot of carrots and sticks here that can be used to make a real deal.

00:52:36.680 | And Trump is very keen on making a deal and ready to negotiate.

00:52:41.200 | Can I ask you a question?

00:52:43.320 | Yeah.

00:52:44.320 | I just really want you and I to be on the same page.

00:52:49.680 | Uh, it's very important to be in the same information space, extremely important.

00:52:57.620 | Uh, let's talk a bit about the ceasefire.

00:53:02.420 | Let me describe the situation to you.

00:53:06.080 | In December, 2019 in Normandy, in Paris, at the Elysee Palace, Macron, Merkel, Putin and

00:53:14.180 | I agreed on the ceasefire, the U.S. wasn't there.

00:53:20.340 | And this, by the way, was a weak point of the meeting.

00:53:23.860 | If you'd like, we can later discuss why they weren't there.

00:53:28.520 | It's a security guarantee thing in general.

00:53:31.220 | It's Germany's position, et cetera.

00:53:35.460 | We agreed on an exchange of hostages and all for all exchange.

00:53:39.740 | We made a deal to exchange everyone for everyone.

00:53:41.820 | I think you know that.

00:53:43.100 | And there was also a meeting that lasted many hours, a meeting where we made, we made a

00:53:49.380 | deal with him.

00:53:51.340 | Everyone was tired.

00:53:52.340 | It was just the two of us in the end.

00:53:54.880 | And I proposed a ceasefire.

00:53:57.380 | By the way, no one in Ukraine believed, few believed in the ceasefire.

00:54:03.780 | And he wanted troop withdrawal.

00:54:05.100 | I calculated that if there were a withdrawal of troops from the line of contact the way

00:54:10.240 | Russians proposed, it would take 20 years.

00:54:13.900 | I proved it to him just in terms of time, square kilometers, namely the length of the

00:54:20.020 | line of contact or delimitation line.

00:54:23.300 | And we agreed on what I told him that it will not work out.

00:54:29.260 | But I had many points because I was deeply involved in the issue.

00:54:34.580 | I was involved very deeply.

00:54:36.500 | It's my thing in general.

00:54:37.780 | If I start doing something, I can't stand there like that guy I spoke about with my

00:54:43.580 | ass out, you know, I must be dressed.

00:54:49.580 | I must be prepared.

00:54:51.180 | I must be prepared better, better than anyone in front of me.

00:54:58.140 | You do sports, right?

00:55:00.100 | I practiced for many years and we know what fights are like, what boxing is, what Thai

00:55:06.340 | boxing is, this is what I did and I loved it very much.

00:55:10.620 | When you step into the ring, you understand everything pretty much.

00:55:16.540 | And so I stepped into it and I was, I was definitely well prepared.

00:55:23.500 | But he wasn't, no.

00:55:26.420 | He was not deeply involved in the process.

00:55:29.140 | What border?

00:55:31.220 | Where is it?

00:55:32.460 | How long will it take to disengage troops?

00:55:34.860 | And why wasn't he involved?

00:55:36.380 | You want to know?

00:55:37.940 | Because he wasn't going to do any of this.

00:55:40.580 | This is what confused me.

00:55:42.060 | If you are not deeply involved in the issue, well then you, it's, it's as if you don't

00:55:49.300 | really need the result.

00:55:51.220 | That's what I think.

00:55:53.420 | So what happened?

00:55:54.420 | We agreed that there will be gas continuation, gas transit in 2019.

00:56:04.940 | We agreed with him, this was a security for Europe.

00:56:07.900 | Merkel asked me for it.

00:56:10.500 | And this was extremely important for Germany.

00:56:14.540 | We agreed with him.

00:56:16.140 | Secondly, we agreed that for him it was just money.

00:56:20.980 | So secondly, we agreed on an exchange.

00:56:24.760 | For me, this was the most important thing.

00:56:26.980 | For them, gas was, for me, was the people.

00:56:31.260 | And this is a fact.

00:56:33.780 | Because I wanted to have a humanitarian advantage so that there would be further meetings that

00:56:39.140 | would lead to sustained peace.

00:56:43.340 | And third, ceasefire.

00:56:47.460 | Ceasefire you spoke about.

00:56:50.300 | What happened?

00:56:52.300 | The gas contract was signed because he needed it.

00:56:55.940 | And by the way, he knew everything about it.

00:56:58.940 | As for exchange, we took the first step and exchanged the people.

00:57:08.460 | Regarding the ceasefire, well, they started killing us in about a month.

00:57:16.420 | So I called him.

00:57:21.380 | And I told him, we agreed on a ceasefire, didn't we?

00:57:25.980 | Well, it wasn't a piece of toilet paper, was it?

00:57:28.360 | This is serious business.

00:57:30.500 | Or so it seemed.

00:57:31.600 | It really was serious.

00:57:33.460 | Merkel, Macron, you and I, we all agreed on this together.

00:57:39.420 | A ceasefire is important, isn't it?

00:57:43.460 | Not for New Year's, because everyone was celebrating New Year's.

00:57:46.860 | And now they're offering us a Christmas ceasefire.

00:57:49.260 | It's all the same.

00:57:50.260 | A ceasefire for two, three days just to get some praise.

00:57:52.860 | But this isn't a performance.

00:57:54.540 | This isn't some kind of theater.

00:57:56.220 | No, this is about people's lives.

00:57:58.740 | And that's what happened.

00:58:00.700 | After that, I called him a few more times.

00:58:03.220 | I think I only had two, three calls with him in total.

00:58:06.740 | I asked him for a ceasefire.

00:58:08.140 | He told me it couldn't be.

00:58:10.980 | We will figure it out now.

00:58:14.220 | People from the occupied territory, Russians and separatists, they were all there together.

00:58:22.420 | They continued to shoot and kill our people.

00:58:24.980 | Yes, the front lines were quiet, but they killed people.

00:58:33.300 | They were killing people.

00:58:34.620 | And I kept calling him.

00:58:35.900 | I called again and again, but there was nothing.

00:58:39.180 | Still, after a few months, the Russians stopped answering the phone.

00:58:43.300 | We did not have any contact since.

00:58:46.820 | I wanted another meeting, like we had in Normandy.

00:58:50.540 | I wanted the next meeting.

00:58:52.180 | I wanted to find a solution, but the Russians refused.

00:58:57.460 | We tried to make it happen through various European countries, and not only European,

00:59:02.460 | but the Russians refused.

00:59:04.060 | They passed along some kind of bullshit, made excuses, they didn't want it.

00:59:09.020 | Meanwhile, they were sending their snipers.

00:59:13.100 | We had evidence, living proof, even video evidence, because some of them were captured

00:59:18.060 | back then.

00:59:19.140 | Those were the snipers in training.

00:59:20.900 | They were training them.

00:59:22.180 | They were training them.

00:59:23.580 | And later, those snipers operated in Syria and Africa.

00:59:28.460 | These snipers were training in our country.

00:59:31.060 | In the East, Ukrainians were living targets.

00:59:35.340 | They were shooting from the other side, killing people, women, people, children.

00:59:40.700 | They were shooting.

00:59:41.980 | It was a hunt.

00:59:43.440 | By the way, it was in the Russian-speaking region in the East, where, according to him,

00:59:48.820 | everyone is speaking Russian.

00:59:50.380 | That's where they were shooting, where the situation currently is the most tense.

00:59:56.100 | They killed people.

00:59:57.420 | We sent this information, sent pictures.

01:00:00.140 | We sent them to the UN, sent them everywhere.

01:00:03.360 | We worked very hard, very persistently.

01:00:05.740 | I met with everyone.

01:00:07.340 | But who thought of Ukraine back then?

01:00:10.300 | They didn't notice it much.

01:00:11.980 | They didn't pay much attention to Crimea being illegally occupied either.

01:00:18.420 | And to be honest, the United States of America, too.

01:00:22.340 | Everyone was somewhat silent about this issue.

01:00:24.560 | That's how it was.

01:00:25.780 | It was like that before a full-scale war.

01:00:30.620 | I want to ask you a question about the ceasefire.

01:00:36.480 | For example, in Mariupol, in Mariupol today, there are American and Ukrainian journalists.

01:00:48.200 | And everyone will tell you who had contact, who has contact now with Mariupol, who fled

01:00:54.780 | from there in the last minutes just before the occupation, or who was able to leave to

01:01:00.640 | escape after the occupation.

01:01:02.740 | Chernoff, who won an Oscar, was among them.

01:01:06.940 | And the journalists that left Mariupol, they are here.

01:01:10.780 | By the way, we had a conversation.

01:01:14.900 | They will tell you that 20,000, 30,000 civilians were tortured and buried there.

01:01:22.320 | We do not know the number of victims.

01:01:25.520 | People who didn't want to work with them, who refused to cooperate with them, people

01:01:29.160 | who went on strikes to protest, people who did not want to work with the Russians who

01:01:33.280 | occupied Mariupol.

01:01:34.640 | And this is one example, just with this city.

01:01:36.860 | And I have a question for you.

01:01:38.760 | What about the millions of children?

01:01:40.800 | And I will ask you in Russian so that you hear this without delay.

01:01:44.640 | What about the millions of children over there?

01:01:47.740 | What if we just arranged a ceasefire without understanding what would happen next?

01:01:52.420 | Without understanding, what will happen to Ukraine's security guarantees?

01:01:57.820 | What about the millions of children in the occupied territories?

01:02:01.200 | What should I tell them?

01:02:03.440 | What am I to tell them?

01:02:04.660 | What is it I should tell them?

01:02:06.840 | What?

01:02:08.220 | Whatever?

01:02:09.220 | Hey, all of you over there, see ya, and those tens of thousands of people buried there,

01:02:15.560 | where they were, is that what we want?

01:02:18.820 | Are we ready to forgive them for this?

01:02:22.180 | We must at least take the first step.

01:02:25.620 | If this is a ceasefire, we must know that there is a security guarantee for the part

01:02:30.300 | of Ukraine under our control.

01:02:32.660 | We need it so that he will not come back.

01:02:37.060 | This is very important.

01:02:38.460 | And what do we say to the people who live in those territories?

01:02:41.820 | These are millions of people.

01:02:43.220 | Did you know that since 2014, in Donetsk, in the Crimea, this is happening in Melitopol

01:02:50.820 | as well, as in Berdyansk now.

01:02:54.460 | They are making all these kids of drafting age go and fight.

01:03:03.700 | And if they don't go, they will be killed.

01:03:05.960 | This is, do you understand what's happening?

01:03:09.320 | That is why a ceasefire, everything I said, what I wish for, and I believe in President

01:03:18.520 | Trump's power to use all of this information to come up with a way to make Ukraine strong

01:03:28.320 | and be strong.

01:03:31.040 | Why am I saying that?

01:03:33.720 | I will give you an example.

01:03:38.240 | President Trump will be in the same situation as I was in 2019, precisely the same situation.

01:03:46.960 | I want to end the war.

01:03:49.000 | We want a lasting peace for Ukraine.

01:03:51.360 | We must do this, the ceasefire, exchange people, and then diplomatically return all territories.

01:03:58.300 | And we will do this through diplomacy.

01:04:02.080 | What will happen next with President Trump?

01:04:05.360 | If the ceasefire happens without security guarantees, at least for the territory we

01:04:10.560 | control, what does he get if he manages to make a ceasefire deal?

01:04:18.040 | And three months later, Putin launches a new wave of attacks.

01:04:23.320 | What will Trump look like?

01:04:25.880 | What will Ukraine look like?

01:04:29.000 | What will everyone look like?

01:04:32.480 | Putin will just do it.

01:04:33.480 | And why would Putin do it?

01:04:35.760 | Because today he's afraid of Trump.

01:04:38.640 | But once Trump manages, for example, to do a ceasefire deal without serious security

01:04:47.400 | guarantees for Ukraine, he will give a pass to Putin.

01:04:51.440 | Not that he wants to.

01:04:52.440 | No, he does not want that.

01:04:53.960 | I believe in what he says.

01:04:56.220 | But he will give Putin an opportunity.

01:04:59.820 | Because in Putin's head, he wants me to fight with Trump.

01:05:04.360 | Putin's plan is to end the occupation of our territory.

01:05:08.600 | This is in his sick head.

01:05:12.400 | And I'm absolutely sure of this.

01:05:15.660 | That is why I told you, don't wait for Putin to want to stop the war.

01:05:22.360 | Pressure him so that he is forced to stop the war.

01:05:28.740 | That's important.

01:05:30.700 | It's important to say that what you said about the children is a tragedy.

01:05:34.220 | War is hell.

01:05:35.740 | But let me say again, we must find a path to peace.

01:05:38.900 | There is one.

01:05:40.340 | What is it?

01:05:41.340 | There is one.

01:05:42.500 | Before ceasefire, strong Ukraine.

01:05:44.860 | Strong Ukraine's position?

01:05:45.860 | Yes, we can speak about it with Trump.

01:05:49.360 | For me, we can speak about security guarantees.

01:05:53.880 | But a quick step, a quick step is NATO, a partial membership NATO.

01:06:00.880 | Yes, I understand.

01:06:03.360 | I understand.

01:06:04.360 | I understand Trump's feelings about NATO.

01:06:05.920 | I heard him.

01:06:07.640 | He's thinking through all of it, of course.

01:06:10.320 | But anyway, yes, NATO is a strong security guarantee for all the people, for us.

01:06:16.920 | Part of security guarantees.

01:06:18.720 | The second part is the arms aid package, which we will not use.

01:06:23.320 | If a ceasefire works, nobody will use the weapons.

01:06:28.040 | For what?

01:06:29.040 | But it has to stay.

01:06:30.360 | But with all due respect to the United States and to the administration, not like before,

01:06:35.840 | I don't want the same situation like we had with Biden.

01:06:39.600 | I ask for sanctions now, please, and weapons now.

01:06:44.400 | And then we will see if they start it again.

01:06:47.200 | Of course, we'll be happy if you'll give us more and you will stand with us shoulder

01:06:51.480 | to shoulder.

01:06:52.480 | Of course, that is right.

01:06:53.860 | But but it's different when you have weapons.

01:06:59.760 | Putin wouldn't have been able to occupy so much territory.

01:07:03.320 | It was very difficult for us to push him out.

01:07:06.360 | But we didn't have weapons before.

01:07:08.200 | And that is the same situation.

01:07:09.760 | It can be the same situation.

01:07:11.720 | I'm just sharing this with you.

01:07:13.840 | Like I said at the very beginning, I want to be very honest with you and with your audience.

01:07:18.380 | Yes, it's true.

01:07:20.560 | If we do not have security guarantees, Putin will come again.

01:07:24.760 | To make it clear, let's describe the idea that you are speaking about.

01:07:30.240 | I would like to offer you other ideas, too.

01:07:32.600 | But right now, your idea is that NATO accepts Ukraine minus the five regions of Luhansk,

01:07:39.560 | Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kursan and Crimea.

01:07:43.720 | So you understand the situation.

01:07:46.420 | The invitation to NATO is legislatively issued to Ukraine.

01:07:52.200 | So to us, all those territories are still Ukraine.

01:07:56.980 | But NATO so far can only act in the part that is under Ukrainian control.

01:08:03.240 | This can be negotiated.

01:08:04.360 | I am sure about that.

01:08:05.760 | Yes, this would not be a great success for us.

01:08:10.680 | But if we see a diplomatic way to end the war, this is one of the ways.

01:08:16.240 | So it is.

01:08:17.240 | Sorry.

01:08:18.240 | That is a start.

01:08:20.080 | Secondly, weapons, arms aid package.

01:08:25.360 | I'm not ready to discuss this publicly right now.

01:08:27.600 | It's all written down.

01:08:29.100 | And President Trump might have seen it or not, but we've got no secrets from him.

01:08:33.320 | Yes.

01:08:34.320 | But mostly it depends on the willingness of the United States, because some of it will

01:08:38.400 | come from the EU, some from the United States, of course, together.

01:08:43.920 | So not just from the United States.

01:08:45.400 | No, no, no.

01:08:46.400 | We need unity with this package.

01:08:48.280 | So the package and sanctions.

01:08:51.040 | Yes, sanctions.

01:08:53.480 | But I think it's in the interest of all the smart people to not have Russian energy on

01:08:59.240 | the market in general.

01:09:00.840 | So he he has to stop it.

01:09:03.200 | That's all.

01:09:04.560 | It's fine.

01:09:05.560 | American oil, American gas is OK.

01:09:07.600 | Why not?

01:09:08.600 | And it's cheaper.

01:09:09.600 | So it will be cheaper for the whole world.

01:09:12.000 | The money will go to the United States.

01:09:14.080 | And I think he will be happy and the president and your people will be happy.

01:09:18.580 | But it's your decision.

01:09:19.580 | I'm just sharing.

01:09:20.580 | Yes.

01:09:21.580 | And cheap oil.

01:09:22.580 | So Putin won't have so much money for for the war.

01:09:26.400 | And that that's it.

01:09:27.720 | But this is difficult because it's a lot.

01:09:30.120 | You're saying to continue the sanctions on Russia to accept Ukraine into NATO.

01:09:34.240 | I need to ask you some difficult questions about this.

01:09:37.380 | Yes.

01:09:38.380 | Go on.

01:09:39.380 | I trust and respect your words today.

01:09:41.000 | Many people respect and love you in America.

01:09:43.480 | Trump respects you.

01:09:46.440 | Loves me.

01:09:47.440 | Oh, come on now.

01:09:49.640 | Remember last time you corrected me when I said that you love Javier Millet?

01:09:52.780 | You said, no, no, no.

01:09:53.780 | I respect him.

01:09:54.780 | So let's not talk about love today.

01:09:57.760 | But could we talk seriously about about guaranteeing Russia's security?

01:10:03.400 | OK, can I interview you a little?

01:10:06.440 | Question is, what land is the war happening on and where did it start?

01:10:11.520 | On our soil, on our territory.

01:10:14.720 | International law was violated.

01:10:16.520 | The sovereignty of our country was violated.

01:10:20.360 | Civilians were killed.

01:10:21.360 | Tens of thousands of our people were taken hostage.

01:10:25.080 | And everyone will tell you this happened.

01:10:29.040 | This is what happened.

01:10:30.700 | When I speak with the Global South, which is trying to balance the two sides because

01:10:34.200 | of the history, because of their roots and because of their shared economic interests

01:10:41.120 | with Russia in the past.

01:10:43.640 | And now, of course, when you talk to them, they are speaking a little bit like you.

01:10:50.040 | I mean, they're balancing a little bit, you know.

01:10:52.840 | Yeah, a little bit in between.

01:10:55.360 | But we will work on it.

01:10:56.920 | Yeah.

01:10:57.920 | It's our first meeting.

01:10:58.920 | During the second one, you will be more on our side.

01:11:01.360 | Yeah.

01:11:02.360 | But it's just just just very convincing.

01:11:03.840 | We will.

01:11:04.840 | Very charismatic.

01:11:05.840 | Yeah.

01:11:06.840 | Thank you.

01:11:07.840 | But when I speak with them, when I speak, it's very important.

01:11:11.600 | Even with their balancing attitude towards the war, they all recognize that this is a

01:11:21.640 | war.

01:11:23.700 | This is not just internal conflict.

01:11:27.720 | This is a full scale war.

01:11:32.720 | That began, that Putin began.

01:11:36.440 | And all of them, all of them, if you talk to them, they say.

01:11:42.120 | But then they all recognize that, that it's his own big mistake, Putin's mistake, and

01:11:52.440 | that he's not right.

01:11:55.640 | That's why I said, no, no, he's not right.

01:11:58.800 | And you have to begin from this.

01:12:00.520 | If you begin at the middle, between Ukraine and Russia, of course, we can speak like this.

01:12:06.280 | You are in the middle and say, OK, what's going on?

01:12:08.760 | There is a fight.

01:12:09.760 | Where is the fight?

01:12:10.960 | It's not the fight like, like in Europe, when Napoleon is fighting against somebody in the

01:12:19.280 | middle of Europe.

01:12:20.400 | No, this is not in the middle of somewhere of the planet, not the planet.

01:12:25.640 | It's concretely on our land.

01:12:27.600 | So one.

01:12:30.160 | Country with one army, one person came to another.

01:12:35.720 | That's it.

01:12:36.920 | It's very clear.

01:12:37.920 | Again, I would like us to find a path to peace.

01:12:42.400 | So let us nevertheless try to start in the middle.

01:12:45.280 | What other ideas do you think might?

01:12:47.120 | You are a very intelligent person and.

01:12:50.960 | Your Russian isn't that good either.

01:12:53.520 | And I told you.

01:12:54.520 | Yes.

01:12:55.520 | That this is only our first meeting.

01:12:56.520 | My English is not very good either.

01:12:58.440 | Your English is very good.

01:13:00.180 | Thank you.

01:13:01.180 | To be honest, I'm terrible at speaking in every language.

01:13:03.520 | Well, there there are other ideas, for instance, sorry to say this.

01:13:07.440 | It sounds crazy.

01:13:08.440 | But what if both Ukraine and Russia are accepted into NATO?

01:13:12.800 | Putin himself spoke about Russia, maybe about NATO.

01:13:18.000 | What you just said is very correct.

01:13:21.440 | What are the guarantees for Russia?

01:13:23.400 | It's not like I'm even interested what happens to them.

01:13:26.560 | To be honest, I don't care what will happen to them in the future after the war ends.

01:13:32.400 | But.

01:13:35.040 | These are our borders and we must understand what is going on there.

01:13:38.960 | Well, the NATO guarantees for Ukraine.

01:13:42.480 | Actually, this is also a security guarantee for the Russians.

01:13:46.520 | Frankly, I talked about this many times before.

01:13:50.760 | Sorry.

01:13:52.800 | I'm speaking figuratively, but as an example, if you were a father who lost his children.

01:13:58.800 | A grown man, a grown man, a man, an adult.

01:14:04.920 | And the war has ended.

01:14:07.600 | And he never got never got justice for real.

01:14:12.680 | For example, somebody decides to freeze support.

01:14:15.680 | We won't give you anything.

01:14:16.940 | You can't fight.

01:14:17.940 | You can't continue.

01:14:19.300 | So we stop when we stop without any guarantees, without any support, without financing, without

01:14:24.600 | OK.

01:14:27.040 | And nobody is held accountable.

01:14:31.080 | But the man lost his children.

01:14:33.960 | He will not get anything.

01:14:36.600 | None of the killers will be in prison.

01:14:39.200 | All the sanctions will be removed.

01:14:42.360 | And and he lost his children.

01:14:45.240 | And we have thousands of such people.

01:14:48.000 | Why do you think they will not go to Russia?

01:14:53.400 | We'll find a way and we'll not kill the Russian soldiers there or somebody there.

01:14:58.480 | Why wouldn't they?

01:14:59.600 | It's human nature.

01:15:00.760 | It's not about us.

01:15:02.360 | It's everyone read American writers.

01:15:05.880 | Always after any war.

01:15:09.840 | If there is no justice for people.

01:15:13.920 | There must be punishment for the crime.

01:15:15.440 | It is only justice.

01:15:16.960 | How come my child was taken away?

01:15:19.600 | The war took him.

01:15:21.280 | This is very scary.

01:15:23.400 | And even whether it was my son who was fulfilling his constitutional duty or simply a missile

01:15:29.800 | that struck a civilian child.

01:15:32.040 | And if there is no justice and the killers are not punished.

01:15:36.120 | Why wouldn't these people come back with hate?

01:15:42.240 | They will definitely come back.

01:15:43.980 | So when we talk about NATO, NATO is not only stopping Russia.

01:15:51.680 | Do not forget NATO is stopping us, too.

01:15:58.300 | Because there will not be justice for everyone.

01:16:01.600 | We know that NATO does not have the right to solve certain issues with war.

01:16:07.380 | NATO is a security alliance.

01:16:09.440 | It is protection, not brainwashing.

01:16:12.880 | What Putin claims that this is offensive is not true.

01:16:17.020 | NATO is a defensive alliance, a security alliance, and it is security for Russia.

01:16:22.700 | But unfortunately, there are many options for peace that don't involve NATO inviting

01:16:28.700 | Ukraine as a member.

01:16:32.180 | Can you imagine security guarantees without NATO membership?

01:16:35.420 | For example, if America simply leaves NATO, I believe there is a high likelihood that

01:16:42.140 | Donald Trump would do such a thing.

01:16:45.020 | I think it's very bad for NATO.

01:16:47.720 | That's the end.

01:16:49.060 | That is.

01:16:50.760 | That's the death of NATO.

01:16:52.380 | It is a pity because I think that it's a very good alliance.

01:16:55.820 | Maybe not everything is good there from the bureaucracy or money, et cetera, but totally

01:17:01.660 | countries who are in NATO, they they don't fight.

01:17:07.260 | There is no war on the land of any of these NATO countries.

01:17:12.600 | I think that is the answer.

01:17:14.100 | It works or not.

01:17:15.880 | It works politically or militarily.

01:17:17.940 | I don't know, but it works.

01:17:19.900 | So without Trump, without the United States of America, there will not be NATO.

01:17:26.540 | That is the first.

01:17:27.940 | So and you say, can we imagine that?

01:17:32.080 | That what?

01:17:33.080 | That there could be security guarantee without.

01:17:34.820 | No, we don't need.

01:17:37.980 | Guarantees without the United States.

01:17:40.260 | That's it, because the United States is a very strong, powerful country.

01:17:45.300 | The United States puts the point.

01:17:47.460 | Of course, Putin said that it's just the Soviet Union where, by the way, Ukraine was the second

01:17:54.120 | strong republic militarily.

01:17:56.060 | Yes, by the way.

01:17:57.740 | But he he, of course, always forgets about it.

01:18:01.540 | But during the World War two.

01:18:04.480 | Without help of the United States, support of your troops, support of your industry,

01:18:10.220 | industrially, militarily, without your money, without your people, Hitler could.

01:18:17.820 | Could win.

01:18:20.620 | So the United States helped a lot, of course, Europe, USSR, and of course, everybody fought.

01:18:28.300 | Everybody did a lot.

01:18:29.620 | But without the United States, it couldn't be such.

01:18:33.280 | I don't use the word success because I think that there is no war which ends successfully

01:18:40.680 | because this is a war seven figure losses, heavy losses in World War two, millions of

01:18:47.460 | people.

01:18:48.460 | And that's why without the United States, security guarantees are not possible.

01:18:53.360 | I mean, these security guarantees which can prevent Russian aggression.

01:18:59.900 | Of course, we have security guarantees bilaterally with some countries financing support of our

01:19:05.660 | internal military and defending and humanitarian issues and demining, which is very important

01:19:12.100 | and helping our children in the school networks.

01:19:15.620 | By the way, this is a very sensitive point.

01:19:18.500 | How many how many bomb shelters?

01:19:21.340 | How many bomb shelters we built with the partners for the children?

01:19:24.800 | And it's a pity that they are underground.

01:19:27.420 | But can you imagine their eyes when they came after Covid?

01:19:32.320 | You understand what does it mean, Covid, but they had Covid and the war and together they

01:19:36.860 | didn't see each other for so many years.

01:19:39.820 | And when they saw each other, even underground, they were very happy and smiling.

01:19:47.340 | So we have such security guarantees.

01:19:51.820 | But it's not enough to prevent yes, preventive measures also work to prevent the aggression

01:19:58.300 | of Putin to stop.

01:20:00.980 | Your English is better than my Russian.

01:20:02.900 | This is so this is wonderful.

01:20:05.860 | I'm not sure.

01:20:06.860 | I'm just giving you a compliment.

01:20:08.100 | Thank you.

01:20:09.100 | No, no.

01:20:10.100 | Thank you.

01:20:11.100 | That kind of thing to a president.

01:20:12.100 | Thanks so much.

01:20:13.100 | By the way, once again, come on, without NATO guarantees, I have a dream that let's say

01:20:19.820 | on January 25 or sometime at the end of January this year.

01:20:24.420 | You will sit down with Donald Trump, with Vladimir Putin, and together negotiate a ceasefire

01:20:30.980 | with strict security guarantees and an agreement will be signed.

01:20:39.100 | What will this look like without NATO?

01:20:41.500 | I will make it clear.

01:20:43.420 | And so, first of all, I think January 25th or some other day.

01:20:48.980 | Well, you just call it January 25th and I don't mind.

01:20:53.580 | It's my birthday and.

01:20:57.460 | We sit down.

01:21:00.020 | First of all, with Trump.

01:21:03.940 | We agree with him on how we can stop the war.

01:21:09.180 | Stop Putin.

01:21:11.060 | It is important for us to sit down.

01:21:14.460 | With him.

01:21:15.660 | Secondly, it is very important for us that Europe.

01:21:21.740 | Which is very important for us because we are part of Europe and not only geographically,

01:21:28.060 | geopolitically, but also in the European Union, where we will be for us, it is very important

01:21:33.020 | that Europe.

01:21:35.260 | Also has a voice.

01:21:37.620 | It's the second thing.

01:21:39.380 | It won't be long because Europe will be looking at us and we'll be looking at Trump.

01:21:44.960 | And by the way, I now see that when I talk about something with Donald Trump, whether

01:21:51.240 | we meet in person or we just have a call, all the European leaders always ask, how was

01:21:56.980 | it?

01:21:57.980 | This shows the influence of.

01:21:59.860 | Donald Trump.

01:22:01.500 | And this has never happened before with an American president.

01:22:06.140 | I tell you from my experience, this also gives you confidence, you know, that he can stop

01:22:13.960 | this war.

01:22:15.340 | That is why we and Trump come first and Europe will support Ukraine's position because they

01:22:22.780 | understand that Ukraine has every right to have its voice heard in this because we are

01:22:28.660 | at war.

01:22:30.020 | Trump and I will come to an agreement.

01:22:33.140 | And then if and I am sure that he can offer strong security guarantees together with Europe

01:22:41.460 | and then we can talk to the Russians.

01:22:45.620 | That's right.

01:22:46.620 | Not just three of us sitting down at once.

01:22:52.100 | And you still talk to me like that.

01:22:54.620 | Do you know how?

01:22:56.220 | As if Putin wants to sit down and talk, but Ukraine does not.

01:23:01.900 | This is not true.

01:23:02.900 | I know that.

01:23:03.900 | Yes, he is, in fact, ready to talk.

01:23:06.460 | Did you talk to him on the phone or what?

01:23:09.220 | How do you normally talk to him?

01:23:10.660 | I don't know.

01:23:11.740 | Normally by the sea.

01:23:12.740 | The same as with you.

01:23:13.780 | He invites you to the sea with me.

01:23:15.900 | Just the three of us.

01:23:16.900 | No, no.

01:23:17.900 | One of us may drown.

01:23:19.100 | Who?

01:23:20.100 | Are you good at swimming?

01:23:21.100 | Yes, I'm a good swimmer.

01:23:22.100 | You're a good swimmer.

01:23:23.780 | Well, and I would like to add that if you have any contact with them, I just want to

01:23:30.940 | hear what happens then.

01:23:32.820 | I have never talked to Vladimir Putin, but I have a feeling that he is ready because

01:23:39.460 | Donald Trump is ready.

01:23:40.980 | I hope you are ready.

01:23:43.860 | And this is not just a feeling, but a dream.

01:23:46.420 | I have a dream here that the three of you will get together in a room and make peace.

01:23:55.760 | And I want to understand what it looks like, what security guarantees look like that would

01:24:00.260 | satisfy Ukraine or satisfy Russia.

01:24:04.500 | Ukraine needs security guarantees first and foremost.

01:24:08.220 | We are in danger.

01:24:10.620 | That is why they are called so.

01:24:13.100 | This is no joke to me.

01:24:16.580 | Let's take a few steps back.

01:24:20.020 | Interesting.

01:24:23.380 | Why are security guarantees, a strong position of Ukraine, strong weapons and so on so important?

01:24:29.420 | I will give you a little history lesson.

01:24:33.380 | Although I think you have prepared yourself and know everything perfectly, well, you can

01:24:38.820 | correct me on that.

01:24:41.020 | Yes, Ukraine had security guarantees.

01:24:46.100 | The Budapest Memorandum.

01:24:47.620 | Nuclear weapons are the security guarantees that Ukraine had.

01:24:51.140 | Ukraine had nuclear weapons.

01:24:53.260 | I do not want to characterize it as good or bad.

01:24:56.220 | Today, the fact that we do not have them is bad.

01:24:59.660 | Why?

01:25:00.660 | Because this is war.

01:25:01.660 | Today we are at war because you unleashed, because you have unleashed the hands of a

01:25:08.180 | nuclear power.

01:25:09.180 | A nuclear power is fighting against us, against Ukraine and doing what it wants.

01:25:15.740 | By the way, even you are now talking about ceasefire, just a ceasefire.

01:25:23.400 | We give flowers to Putin, maybe to say thank you so much for these years.

01:25:28.700 | That was a great part of my life.

01:25:30.740 | No, we are not just ready for this.

01:25:34.100 | Why?

01:25:35.180 | The Budapest Memorandum, nuclear weapons, this is what we had.

01:25:39.740 | Ukraine used them for protection.

01:25:41.180 | This does not mean that someone attacked us.

01:25:43.940 | That doesn't mean that we would have used it.

01:25:46.380 | We had that opportunity.

01:25:48.340 | These were our security guarantees.

01:25:50.220 | Why am I talking about this in detail?

01:25:52.260 | Because if you take the Budapest Memorandum, by the way, I discussed this with President

01:25:57.700 | Trump.

01:25:58.700 | We have not finished this conversation yet.

01:26:01.340 | We will continue it regarding the Budapest Memorandum.

01:26:04.340 | The Budapest Memorandum included security guarantees for Ukraine.

01:26:08.220 | At first, three, three, the most important security guarantors for Ukraine, three strategic

01:26:16.380 | friends and partners of Ukraine.

01:26:21.940 | This was in agreement, United States of America, Russia, Britain, France and China joined.

01:26:28.780 | There were five states that these are not even security guarantees.

01:26:34.900 | We now understand that this is not a guarantee of security because on the one hand, these

01:26:40.180 | are security guarantees, but there was an English word, as far as I understand, assurance.

01:26:47.460 | It is translated as assurance, assurance, right?

01:26:52.360 | And in Russian, it will be and what assurance.

01:26:59.580 | That is, give up nuclear weapons because you were under pressure of the U.S. and Russia

01:27:08.140 | for Ukraine to give them up.

01:27:11.940 | These two powers were exerting pressure.

01:27:14.900 | These two states negotiated to ensure that Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons.

01:27:19.600 | Ukraine agreed.

01:27:20.600 | These, these are the largest states.

01:27:22.780 | This is the nuclear five that does not, not even provide security guarantees.

01:27:27.800 | Now we just need to find these people and we just need to put in jail all of those who

01:27:32.520 | frankly invented all this.

01:27:36.760 | So confidence, so confidence, assurance, assurance that Ukraine will be territorially

01:27:46.200 | integral with its sovereignty.

01:27:51.720 | It was a piece of paper, if you are curious, by the way, that after occupying part of our

01:27:58.000 | Donbass and Crimea, Ukraine sent diplomats three times, I don't think I remember, three

01:28:05.600 | times within a few years, we sent letters to all security guarantors, to all members

01:28:11.700 | of the Budapest Memorandum.

01:28:14.100 | What did they send?

01:28:15.140 | That what was written on the piece of paper, consultations.

01:28:21.280 | Ukraine holds consultations if its territorial integrity is violated and everyone should

01:28:28.000 | be in consultation.

01:28:30.680 | Everyone must come.

01:28:32.820 | Everyone must meet urgently.

01:28:35.160 | USA, Britain, Russia, France, China.

01:28:42.480 | Did anyone come, you ask?

01:28:45.640 | No.

01:28:46.720 | Did anyone reply to these letters, official letters, they are all recorded by diplomats.

01:28:51.880 | Did anyone conduct consultations?

01:28:53.880 | No.

01:28:55.120 | And why not?

01:28:56.120 | They didn't give a fuck.

01:28:58.200 | This is understandable in Russian, right?

01:29:01.380 | That as Russia didn't give a damn, neither did all the other security guarantors of the

01:29:07.460 | Budapest Memorandum.

01:29:08.860 | None of them gave a damn about this country, these people, these security guarantees, etc.

01:29:17.900 | We take a break.

01:29:18.900 | This will be a Budapest Memorandum.

01:29:21.820 | The last time with me, imagine how many years it was with me, in February 2022.

01:29:29.760 | In February 2022, the war began.

01:29:32.680 | A full-scale war.

01:29:35.920 | Letters for consultations have been sent.

01:29:39.440 | No one answers.

01:29:42.720 | Next we are taking a break from the Budapest Memorandum.

01:29:46.200 | The question is simple about Budapest.

01:29:48.060 | Can we trust this?

01:29:49.520 | No.

01:29:50.520 | Whichever country out of these five sat at the negotiating table, just a piece of paper.

01:29:58.280 | Believe me, we will save you, no, another.

01:30:05.080 | This is a train.

01:30:06.800 | This is a train with waste paper, with security guarantees, which Ukraine has been riding

01:30:15.000 | for many years.

01:30:17.220 | The second car on this train is the Minsk agreements.

01:30:21.000 | The Normandy format and the Minsk agreements, where it was written, where the signatories

01:30:27.480 | were.

01:30:28.480 | The United States of America was no longer there.

01:30:30.440 | I understand that Obama was here at the time.

01:30:33.280 | And as far as I know, I think they were simply not interested in what happened to Ukraine

01:30:37.800 | and where it was in general, where it was located.

01:30:40.360 | Well, somewhere there.

01:30:42.560 | Part of something.

01:30:43.560 | People, well, people and let it be.

01:30:45.860 | Let it be with these people.

01:30:48.440 | The United States simply did not participate.

01:30:52.200 | In the Minsk agreements, there are no claims to the U.S. because they were not guarantors.

01:30:58.960 | Where is the claim?

01:31:00.800 | A step back, 2008, Bucharest, everyone has already learned from the Budapest Memorandum.

01:31:11.200 | Bucharest, 2008, Bucharest, Mr. Bush, president of the United States, Republican, says that

01:31:23.200 | Ukraine should be in NATO.

01:31:26.400 | This is the voice of Republicans.

01:31:29.160 | Check it out.

01:31:30.920 | Ukraine should be in NATO.

01:31:34.000 | Everybody's looking at the U.S. always.

01:31:36.320 | All in favor.

01:31:37.320 | Who is against?

01:31:38.320 | Merkel.

01:31:39.440 | She opposes.

01:31:40.680 | And she forced everyone not to give Ukraine an invitation to join NATO because that would

01:31:45.520 | be a step.

01:31:46.520 | Seriously, Republicans were in favor.

01:31:49.200 | The U.S. was in favor because Republicans and Bush were not afraid of anyone.

01:31:56.420 | They were not afraid of anyone.

01:31:57.800 | And they knew that Ukraine rightly wanted to join NATO.

01:32:00.840 | She chooses so.

01:32:02.000 | And what is the question?

01:32:03.280 | Well, people made their choice.

01:32:05.560 | Well, and the Russians will not look that way.

01:32:08.720 | That was not the case then.

01:32:10.280 | Why?

01:32:11.280 | Because the Russians were different.

01:32:14.360 | Next, Minsk.

01:32:18.880 | We didn't succeed.

01:32:21.240 | After the Minsk agreements, as I told you, hundreds of meetings were held.

01:32:27.200 | I have had hundreds of meetings since 2019.

01:32:33.720 | We could not think about a ceasefire.

01:32:36.080 | A ceasefire is our offer.

01:32:39.160 | This is not somebody's suggestion.

01:32:41.840 | This is mine.

01:32:42.840 | I would like -- I wanted to in Ukraine.

01:32:47.600 | Society was divided.

01:32:49.800 | Not everyone wanted to.

01:32:51.060 | Half did not want to.

01:32:52.320 | Half were against.

01:32:53.320 | Half were in favor.

01:32:54.560 | Some of them shouted, "Do not believe it."

01:32:56.480 | Some of them shouted, "Believe it."

01:32:58.440 | I am the president of Ukraine.

01:33:01.240 | I was given a mandate of trust by 70% of the population to take appropriate steps, and

01:33:07.120 | I made them.

01:33:10.120 | This is not a joke.

01:33:11.120 | We'll just sit the three of us?

01:33:13.560 | I am simply telling you what is.

01:33:16.760 | This is how can I tell you.

01:33:20.000 | These meetings must be serious and prepared, and prepared with those who want peace.

01:33:28.400 | Ukraine wants peace.

01:33:29.400 | U.S. wants peace.

01:33:31.200 | We have to sit down with Trump, and that is 100%.

01:33:34.840 | First and foremost, number one.

01:33:37.000 | Moreover, he told me on the phone that he is waiting for us to meet, and there will

01:33:42.760 | be an official visit, and my visit would be the first or one of the first to him.

01:33:48.480 | And for him, this topic is very important.

01:33:50.680 | I know that he has his own matters, American issues, I understand.

01:33:54.960 | I heard his election program, but regarding international affairs, I think our issue is

01:34:01.640 | one of the most pressing issues for President Trump.

01:34:04.760 | Therefore, I believe very much, I trust his words, and I hope we will meet again.

01:34:09.160 | We need to prepare.

01:34:12.000 | We have many plans to build on, and they exist, and they are supported by many countries,

01:34:18.200 | but we need his vision.

01:34:21.780 | He needs to look at all these details, but his vision, please, because he can't stop

01:34:27.880 | Putin, because Putin is afraid of him.

01:34:31.360 | That's a fact.

01:34:33.180 | But Trump is a president of a democratic country, and he does not come for life.

01:34:39.980 | He is not Putin.

01:34:41.140 | He will not come for 25 years.

01:34:43.860 | He will come for his term.

01:34:46.600 | Please tell me.

01:34:48.800 | Well, for example, he came for four years, and for the fifth year, Putin came with a

01:34:57.480 | war.

01:34:58.480 | Will it make Trump feel better that there was no war during his time, and that Ukraine

01:35:03.080 | was destroyed after him?

01:35:04.840 | Why destroyed?

01:35:07.640 | Putin is whoever, a killer whoever, but not a fool.

01:35:11.640 | He will be prepared.

01:35:15.640 | He knows all mistakes.

01:35:17.640 | He understands how we defeated his army after the invasion began.

01:35:21.640 | He realized that this was not a Soviet war, and that this would not happen with us.

01:35:26.320 | He will prepare.

01:35:27.680 | He will let everything into arms production.

01:35:30.320 | He will have lots of weapons, and there will be a very large army, and you think that after

01:35:35.640 | such humiliation, four years without a war, he did not finish us.

01:35:42.300 | He will return and fight only against Ukraine.

01:35:46.760 | He will destroy everything around.

01:35:49.360 | And if you say there is a risk that Trump, President Trump, will withdraw from NATO,

01:35:53.880 | for example, this is a decision of the United States.

01:35:56.600 | I'm simply saying that if it does, Putin will destroy Europe.

01:36:01.880 | Calculate the size of army in Europe.

01:36:04.520 | It's just that I say it for a reason.

01:36:06.720 | Do the calculation.

01:36:08.600 | Why did Hitler conquer all of Europe then?

01:36:11.640 | Almost.

01:36:13.400 | Let's count, remember, his armies of millions.

01:36:18.120 | Calculate what Europe has.

01:36:19.120 | What are the largest armies?

01:36:21.680 | We have the largest army.

01:36:24.240 | The Ukrainian army is the largest in Europe.

01:36:28.600 | The second place after us is four times smaller than us.

01:36:32.440 | France.

01:36:33.440 | Yes.

01:36:34.440 | 200,000?

01:36:35.440 | I think the French have about 200,000.

01:36:39.280 | We have 980.

01:36:41.860 | So this powerful coalition of European nations.

01:36:44.280 | That will not be enough.

01:36:45.280 | Yes, it's not going to be enough, but you're a smart man, there's a lot of ideas.

01:36:49.640 | Partnerships with Global South, India, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, economic partnerships,

01:36:58.480 | political partnerships, it all protects you.

01:37:01.660 | First of all, look at one example.

01:37:07.040 | North Korea.

01:37:09.080 | Just look at this example.

01:37:11.760 | 12,000 has arrived.

01:37:16.680 | Today, 3,800 killed or wounded.

01:37:26.440 | They can bring more, 30,000, 40,000, or maybe 500.

01:37:40.200 | They can bring many people.

01:37:42.120 | Why?

01:37:43.120 | Because they have order, autocracy, and everything.

01:37:47.240 | Can Europe bring people together?

01:37:50.040 | No.

01:37:52.040 | Will Europe be able to build an army consisting of two to three million people?

01:37:56.960 | No, Europe will not want to do this.

01:37:58.720 | And for what?

01:37:59.760 | We definitely don't want a world war with you.

01:38:02.720 | There is no such purpose.

01:38:04.460 | There is no such purpose as gathering everyone.

01:38:07.720 | We do not want any war.

01:38:09.080 | We want to stop the Russians.

01:38:10.280 | And they invite North Korean soldiers, invited.

01:38:19.240 | Their faces are burned.

01:38:22.280 | They themselves burn their faces.

01:38:25.600 | Those who cannot escape, injured or killed.

01:38:29.240 | There's a video, everything I'm telling you, there is evidence of this.

01:38:34.600 | So that they are not recognizable, right?

01:38:39.680 | It means, what does it mean?

01:38:43.640 | It's out of values which share Europe.

01:38:46.400 | Europe counts.

01:38:48.240 | It means that those guys, they don't count, rahuyut, it's count, yes?

01:38:54.800 | They don't count the number of people.

01:38:57.760 | That is the answer.

01:38:58.760 | Can they move more?

01:38:59.920 | Yes.

01:39:00.920 | Can they move dozens of thousands?

01:39:02.400 | Yes, because we see what they have.

01:39:05.480 | Last year, for example, Europe gave us one million artillery rounds.

01:39:13.040 | We produced a lot ourselves.

01:39:16.320 | But they gave us initiative.

01:39:18.480 | It was initiative.

01:39:20.320 | One million artillery rounds and of 155 and etc.

01:39:29.680 | We produced more.

01:39:33.340 | But North Korea gave Putin 3.7.

01:39:38.760 | Just gave him.

01:39:40.800 | So he also has a deficit for today.

01:39:43.320 | It means he needs what?

01:39:44.680 | He needs time.

01:39:46.560 | But the number of soldiers, yes, and the number of artillery rounds is not everything.

01:39:54.120 | As you have said, let's say Donald Trump guarantees security for four years.

01:40:01.520 | You can form partnerships with India, with Saudi Arabia that enforce punishment, the

01:40:08.440 | stick, on oil prices, for example, if any aggressive action is taken.

01:40:14.320 | You can actually even build, I've met a lot of incredible Ukrainian tech people, IT people.

01:40:23.080 | You can build great companies that form partnerships with the United States, that form partnerships

01:40:27.320 | with China.

01:40:29.240 | And that is a big leverage against aggression of however many million artillery rounds.

01:40:37.080 | And that, a sheet of paper, you don't need a sheet of paper of protection.

01:40:41.360 | Ah, that's you, well, when you speak.

01:40:47.120 | In English.

01:40:48.120 | In English, yeah.

01:40:49.120 | You don't even need answers, because when you now are talking, you already answered

01:40:54.840 | on all the questions.

01:40:56.520 | The first one is that during this time, you need just cooperation, a lot of money for

01:41:04.400 | this military industry.

01:41:06.840 | In Ukraine or in Europe, with India, Saudi Arabia, Saudi and the United States, you need

01:41:14.440 | a lot of money.

01:41:16.320 | So the question is where you will get it.

01:41:18.300 | So my answer was to Trump.

01:41:20.480 | I said, this is one of the security guarantees.

01:41:23.300 | Take 300 billions of frozen Russian assets.

01:41:28.140 | We will take it.

01:41:29.800 | Take money, what we need for our interior production, and we will buy all the weapons

01:41:34.240 | from the United States.

01:41:35.560 | We don't need gifts from the United States.

01:41:38.840 | It will be very good for your industry.

01:41:41.900 | For the United States, we will put money there, Russian money.

01:41:46.320 | Not Ukrainian, not European, Russian money, Russian assets.

01:41:49.720 | They have to pay for this.

01:41:51.360 | We will put it and we will make it.

01:41:53.480 | This is one of security guarantees.

01:41:54.720 | Yes, of course.

01:41:55.980 | Because this is a military guarantee, yes.

01:41:59.400 | But then the second you said, that energy price and a lot of sanctions on products and

01:42:07.520 | the Russian shadow fleet and et cetera.

01:42:10.120 | That is the second answer we spoke about before, yes, put more sanctions on them.

01:42:16.060 | More sanctions.

01:42:17.360 | It's okay.

01:42:18.360 | Not, but not to take off sanctions.

01:42:20.800 | That's okay with you, but it's not going to be okay with the president of Russia.

01:42:24.680 | Yes, but I'm not thinking how it will be very good for him.

01:42:28.200 | He's still a killer.

01:42:29.400 | I understand, but unfortunately, the reality is that a compromise is needed in order to

01:42:34.600 | reach an agreement.

01:42:35.600 | So in your understanding, the fact that he is no in jail after all the murders, he is

01:42:39.880 | not in jail assuming all the murders, and no one in the world is able to put him in

01:42:45.280 | his place, send him to prison.

01:42:48.040 | Do you think this is a small compromise?

01:42:50.660 | This is not a small compromise and to forgive him will not be a small compromise.

01:42:55.400 | To forgive.

01:42:56.400 | No one will forgive.

01:42:57.400 | It is absolutely impossible to forgive him.

01:42:59.920 | We cannot get into the head and soul of a person who lost their family.

01:43:03.680 | Nobody never will accept this.

01:43:06.720 | Absolutely impossible.

01:43:07.760 | I don't know.

01:43:08.760 | Do you have children?

01:43:09.760 | No, not yet, but I would like to.

01:43:12.080 | Yes.

01:43:13.080 | God bless.

01:43:14.080 | And this is the most important thing in life.

01:43:15.580 | And they simply took away the most precious thing from you.

01:43:18.080 | Will you ask who ruined your life before going to rip their head off?

01:43:23.760 | I'm just curious.

01:43:24.800 | They took your child away.

01:43:26.320 | Are you going to ask who did this?

01:43:28.080 | And they will answer that that dude did this.

01:43:30.000 | You will say, oh, well, then there are no questions.

01:43:32.520 | No, no, no.

01:43:34.120 | You will go fucking hell and bite their head off.

01:43:37.560 | And it will be fair.

01:43:40.500 | Can murderers be forgiven?

01:43:42.040 | That's why you make security guarantees.

01:43:47.500 | What I told you for those who are here and what we control and what will not happen and

01:43:52.400 | that those who lost, we will we will we will never forget.

01:43:57.300 | And a matter of time.

01:43:59.120 | But when you gave us NATO, I just said this means that after a while, everything I said

01:44:04.680 | about NATO, after a while, Ukraine will not go against Russia and Russia will not go against

01:44:12.320 | Ukraine because you are in NATO.

01:44:13.880 | I am just saying is not that a compromise?

01:44:16.640 | So NATO is a compromise.

01:44:18.640 | This is not just a security guarantee, in my opinion.

01:44:22.360 | Look, when rockets were attacking Israel.

01:44:27.040 | And Israel is not in NATO.

01:44:30.080 | NATO countries, aircrafts were deployed.

01:44:34.840 | Air defense.

01:44:36.800 | The air defense worked.

01:44:39.800 | Operated by.

01:44:41.800 | Different.

01:44:43.280 | Middle Eastern countries.

01:44:44.840 | These are also security guarantees.

01:44:48.800 | And by the way.

01:44:51.200 | Israel has nuclear weapons.

01:44:54.920 | So why do they need NATO when in fact they have more than NATO has?

01:44:59.240 | The American, British and French aviation stepped in.

01:45:04.200 | There was ADA.

01:45:05.200 | I don't remember from from Jordan.

01:45:08.720 | Listen, thousands of missiles were shot down that way.

01:45:12.420 | This is this is what is this?

01:45:15.400 | So it's a guarantee of safety.

01:45:17.600 | It's just that it's not called NATO.

01:45:21.720 | Is some Uncle Vova irritated by the word NATO?

01:45:25.560 | There's a problem with the word.

01:45:28.720 | And I think he's simply irritated by people who who are alive and living here.

01:45:34.120 | If you believe this, it will be very difficult to negotiate.

01:45:37.100 | If you think that the president of a country is completely crazy, it is really hard to

01:45:43.000 | come to an agreement with him.

01:45:44.720 | You have to look at him as a serious person who loves his country and loves the people

01:45:50.760 | in his country.

01:45:51.800 | And he conducts.

01:45:52.800 | Yes.

01:45:53.800 | Destructive military.

01:45:54.800 | What are you talking about now?

01:45:55.800 | Who loves his country?

01:45:56.800 | Putin.

01:45:57.800 | Do you think he doesn't love his country?

01:46:00.440 | No.

01:46:01.440 | What is his country?

01:46:02.440 | He happened to consider Ukraine his country.

01:46:04.680 | What is his country?

01:46:06.040 | Explain it.

01:46:07.040 | Let's say that it's America.

01:46:08.960 | No pity for the Chechens.

01:46:11.320 | Do they look like Russians?

01:46:13.540 | Do they speak Russian?

01:46:17.600 | Of course.

01:46:18.700 | Of course they learn in schools like anywhere there's been Russification.

01:46:22.940 | Who are the Chechens?

01:46:24.900 | A different people.

01:46:28.640 | Another faith.

01:46:30.280 | Other people.

01:46:31.980 | Another language.

01:46:32.980 | A million.

01:46:33.980 | Eliminated.

01:46:34.980 | Eliminated.

01:46:38.340 | And eliminated how?

01:46:40.300 | How did he kill them?

01:46:42.340 | With love?

01:46:43.460 | I know.

01:46:44.460 | Fuck.

01:46:45.460 | By hugging.

01:46:46.460 | In Ukrainian, as we say, strangling by hugging.

01:46:49.940 | I love you so, so much.

01:46:51.460 | I love you so much that I want to kill you.

01:46:54.420 | That's his love.

01:46:55.900 | And that's not love.

01:46:57.940 | You're mistaken.

01:46:59.380 | He does not love his people.

01:47:01.440 | He loves his inner circle.

01:47:03.020 | It's only a small part of the people.

01:47:05.180 | He doesn't love them.

01:47:07.780 | Why?

01:47:08.980 | I'll explain.

01:47:11.300 | You cannot send your people to another land to die knowing that they will die.

01:47:22.700 | Children, my daughter, my daughter, she is 20 years old.

01:47:31.340 | For me, this is a child.

01:47:33.380 | She is already an adult, of course.

01:47:37.000 | But she is, she is a child.

01:47:39.000 | The boys, the boys he sends are 18 years old, 18 years old.

01:47:44.900 | They are children.

01:47:45.900 | He sends them.

01:47:47.860 | It's not that fascists came to his land and he needs to defend it.

01:47:55.100 | He came to ours and he sent them.

01:47:58.220 | Chechnya.

01:47:59.500 | He sent them.

01:48:00.780 | Syria.

01:48:01.780 | He sent them.

01:48:03.020 | Africa.

01:48:04.020 | He sent them.

01:48:05.020 | Georgia.

01:48:06.020 | He sent them.

01:48:07.420 | Moldova, Transnistria, that was before him.

01:48:10.620 | Fine.

01:48:11.620 | We can leave that aside.

01:48:12.620 | He has enough sins of his own.

01:48:14.260 | And, and then there's Ukraine, the largest part.

01:48:19.020 | 780,000, 788,000 killed or, or wounded Russians.

01:48:34.820 | He calls them all Russians.

01:48:36.620 | Even those who don't know, who don't know how to speak Russian.

01:48:41.020 | On his territory of Russia, everything they've enslaved, yes, proud Varangians.

01:48:48.260 | So I wonder, is that love?

01:48:50.020 | What love is this?

01:48:51.460 | And for what?

01:48:52.940 | Does he love his people?

01:48:54.620 | No.

01:48:55.900 | Does he love his land?

01:48:57.140 | His country is bigger than America.

01:48:59.980 | How much land do you need?

01:49:01.940 | America is huge.

01:49:03.580 | America is simply an outstanding country.

01:49:07.140 | Outstanding country.

01:49:10.020 | Russia is bigger.

01:49:11.780 | Well, just bigger.

01:49:15.340 | So, so ask yourself, does he love them?

01:49:19.180 | What is he doing?

01:49:20.500 | And what does he love?

01:49:23.100 | Do you think he's been everywhere in his Russia?

01:49:27.020 | It's impossible to get around it.

01:49:28.700 | He hasn't been everywhere.

01:49:30.740 | He just hasn't.

01:49:31.740 | Well, I believe that Donald Trump loves America, and I don't think he has been to every single

01:49:36.740 | American city.

01:49:38.100 | No, no, no.

01:49:39.900 | I saw his rallies.

01:49:41.900 | So many rallies.

01:49:42.900 | No, no.

01:49:43.900 | Let's be honest, let's be honest.

01:49:46.140 | He had it, and I saw it, and it's very difficult.

01:49:49.020 | He's not, I mean, he's not 18, yes, but he's strong.

01:49:53.380 | And this is his will.

01:49:56.260 | Everywhere where the war is.

01:49:58.340 | I'm sure.

01:50:00.500 | I pray to God it never will be on your land, yes, and I'm sure that it will not be.

01:50:06.260 | But I'm sure that if you have in some region the problems, how to say, earthquake, hurricane,

01:50:13.500 | you have it all, well, I'm sure that President Trump would be there.

01:50:21.780 | After one day, two or three days, I don't know the security of all these things, but

01:50:25.620 | he will be.

01:50:26.620 | Otherwise, how will people look at him?

01:50:28.860 | Yes, of course he will.

01:50:30.900 | Of course.

01:50:32.180 | The same about me.

01:50:33.860 | I'm not comparing myself with him.

01:50:35.700 | I'm just, where it is difficult for people, I have to come.

01:50:39.580 | The question, the next question is very simple, region, Kursk region.

01:50:48.900 | The operation there.

01:50:52.580 | Did Putin, was Putin in Kursk during, during four months?

01:50:59.420 | No.

01:51:00.420 | Listen, I have tremendous respect for you, admiration for many reasons, one of which

01:51:06.460 | is you stayed in Kiev, and another one is that you visit the front, and you talk to

01:51:12.740 | the soldiers in the front, and you talk to people all across Ukraine, absolutely, tremendous

01:51:17.620 | respect for that.

01:51:20.020 | And not enough people say that, you know, I had a conversation with Tucker Carlson,

01:51:27.380 | for example, and, you know, I said that you're a hero for staying in Kiev, and he said, well,

01:51:32.380 | he just did a thing that every leader should do.

01:51:36.500 | But I think not enough leaders do the thing that every leader should do.

01:51:40.700 | So tremendous respect, and I agree with you totally, yes, a leader should go to the front

01:51:47.140 | of a war.

01:51:48.140 | You know, that said, America has waged wars all across the world.

01:51:53.140 | That has, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq cost nine trillion dollars, and killed over

01:52:01.580 | a million people.

01:52:06.060 | War is hell, and that just because war is waged in terrible ways that it is, does not

01:52:13.260 | mean the leader does not love their country, but I take your point.

01:52:17.540 | I once again have a dream that even if there's hate, that you sit down with Donald Trump

01:52:25.500 | and Vladimir Putin, and you find a way to peace.

01:52:29.100 | Let me ask you a question.

01:52:32.700 | What do you think?

01:52:33.700 | Will there ever be a day when the Ukrainian people forgive the Russian people, and both

01:52:38.780 | peoples will travel back and forth again, and marry each other, rekindle and form friendships?

01:52:46.420 | Will there be such a time in the future?

01:52:47.940 | I think history has long answered this question.

01:52:52.260 | I don't know how it will be for us.

01:52:55.980 | It will be in the future, without a doubt.

01:53:00.020 | History has shown this time, and again, after every devastating war, one generation, one

01:53:08.740 | country recognizes that it is, was an aggressor, and it comes to realize this is impossible

01:53:25.220 | to forgive.

01:53:26.900 | This is precisely the kind of education they've had in Germany for many years, even though

01:53:32.260 | these children had nothing to do with it, it was their grandfathers who participated,

01:53:37.900 | and not all of them were participants of Nazi Germany's war against, essentially against

01:53:45.620 | the world, yes, and against life, and therefore, they're still apologizing.

01:53:55.100 | Apologizing is not easy.

01:53:56.340 | They know that they were the aggressors.

01:53:59.460 | They were guilty.

01:54:01.020 | They do not look for compromise in history.

01:54:05.360 | Compromise in itself buys time, and they understand this.

01:54:09.420 | There are convicted murderers, condemned both historically and by their own people.

01:54:17.060 | Reparations have been paid, and security guarantees have been established by the way, and all

01:54:22.820 | this is done, and when all this is done and recognized, in any case, people develop relations

01:54:32.100 | with each other.

01:54:33.340 | That's clear, but it can only happen the way it always has, always has in history.

01:54:41.380 | Russia will have to apologize.

01:54:44.340 | It will.

01:54:45.480 | This will happen because they are guilty.

01:54:48.580 | They are guilty, and as I told you, the guilty are different.

01:54:52.540 | Both those who participated, and those who remain silent, because silence is also about

01:54:59.500 | participating, in my opinion.

01:55:08.020 | Can I ask about Donald Trump?

01:55:09.660 | We've already mentioned him a lot, but let's focus there.

01:55:14.860 | What do you admire, what do you respect about Donald Trump?

01:55:19.260 | And also maybe, why do you think he won overwhelmingly the election in 2024, that American people

01:55:27.300 | chose him?

01:55:28.980 | He was stronger.

01:55:30.860 | He was much more stronger than Kamala Harris, Biden first, and then Kamala Harris, yes?

01:55:37.900 | He showed that he can intellectually and physically.

01:55:44.800 | It was an important point to show that if you want to have a strong country, you have

01:55:49.940 | to be strong, and he was strong.

01:55:51.560 | And this number of rallies, what I said, is not a simple thing.

01:55:55.520 | He showed that he can, he is strong.

01:55:58.800 | So he doesn't have any questions with his, I mean, this age and et cetera, nothing.

01:56:05.520 | He is young.

01:56:06.920 | He is young here, and his brains work.

01:56:09.520 | So I think, I think it's important, very important.

01:56:13.240 | And of course, a lot of interior questions.

01:56:15.760 | I understand the prices and et cetera, economic questions, and the questions of, you have

01:56:22.080 | the questions with other things.

01:56:24.640 | Immigration, yeah.

01:56:26.240 | A lot of things, I understand.

01:56:28.740 | So maybe he answered on those questions which people had.

01:56:34.720 | One of the questions.

01:56:36.080 | That he will finish the war.

01:56:37.600 | That he will finish the war.

01:56:38.720 | Yeah.

01:56:39.720 | For me, this is the main question.

01:56:41.260 | But I said that for him, he's the president of the United States.

01:56:45.200 | For him, his priority is his questions in the United States.

01:56:49.440 | And I understand, and I respect it.

01:56:51.400 | But the second he was speaking about the world, yes, he said that he will finish the war.

01:56:56.480 | And I hope very much.

01:56:59.920 | Because I think that our people really support his idea.

01:57:07.280 | And that's why I said it is for me.

01:57:09.920 | It's very, very important to have enough people around him who will have connections with

01:57:19.520 | him, with the right things.

01:57:22.080 | For me, the truth is, very right things.

01:57:26.240 | What's going on really on the battlefield?

01:57:29.480 | What's going on really with Putin and Russia?

01:57:34.160 | What he really wants, and that is just to have it.

01:57:38.200 | You know, before any decision, you have to be at the same level of information.

01:57:45.120 | And we need, really, we need him to know everything from us, from you, from people in Ukraine,

01:57:55.000 | from people around who are really afraid, afraid that Putin doesn't want to stop the

01:58:02.840 | war, afraid that he will come back with his aggression.

01:58:07.760 | So first of all, I should mention that our conversation today will be translated and

01:58:14.040 | dubbed into Ukrainian, English, Russian, other languages, Spanish, so you're in your voice.

01:58:24.480 | So there are great guys originally from Poland.

01:58:28.960 | It's a company called Eleven Labs.

01:58:30.680 | They use, they've trained an AI.

01:58:34.560 | Artificial intelligence sounds truly remarkable in your voice.

01:58:37.800 | You have the freedom to speak in any language you choose, but no matter what, you will always

01:58:41.360 | find yourself returning to speaking in Ukrainian.

01:58:45.520 | That is, when you talk about Donald Trump, you can do it in Ukrainian or Russian.

01:58:49.560 | Everybody understands.

01:58:50.560 | Everybody understands.

01:58:53.600 | But you said that there's some things about the war that maybe Americans don't understand.

01:59:00.200 | So we talked about Putin.

01:59:03.040 | We talked about the security guarantees.

01:59:05.200 | But the reality of war, what's happening on the ground, what do you think that people

01:59:11.040 | should understand?

01:59:13.240 | First of all, they have to understand the idea of Putin's war.

01:59:17.020 | It is very important for him.

01:59:20.000 | I consider this process.

01:59:23.360 | I think it is very important for him not to give Ukraine independence.

01:59:30.400 | To prevent Ukraine from developing as an independent country, for him, influence, influence on

01:59:36.720 | Ukraine cannot be lost.

01:59:40.400 | And for him, it is, you know, like, I think for him, this is such a goal.

01:59:51.160 | And this last mile, and certainly for him, the last mile, and of his political life.

02:00:06.880 | And I think that this is the goal for him.

02:00:10.320 | The second story, I do not want to talk about these banalities, that he wants to return

02:00:17.200 | all the territories of the Soviet Union, influence over them.

02:00:20.720 | He does this little by little.

02:00:22.500 | I just don't want to.

02:00:24.400 | People need to know details.

02:00:26.120 | For example, Georgia, which was headed towards the EU and NATO, completely turns towards

02:00:30.800 | Russia regardless of the fact that they have frozen conflicts.

02:00:36.440 | They have in Abkhazia what we have with Donbass, which is controlled by militant rebels.

02:00:41.520 | Abkhazia is not developing.

02:00:42.840 | It's just a part, a very beautiful part of Georgia that has died.

02:00:47.100 | And if you have the opportunity, then go there someday.

02:00:50.420 | You will understand.

02:00:51.440 | It simply died because Putin wanted to.

02:00:53.840 | He wanted not to allow them to develop because a frozen conflict means that you will not

02:00:57.880 | be accepted in the EU and certainly will not be accepted into NATO.

02:01:02.600 | Because right now, yes, they do not take you because of a frozen conflict.

02:01:07.160 | And this is what Putin did.

02:01:08.640 | It's very important for him not to lose this influence.

02:01:11.120 | That is, he turned back Georgia, young people, students, everyone leaves.

02:01:16.320 | And this is a fact.

02:01:17.320 | Georgia is quite small and they will leave.

02:01:20.360 | They want to live in Europe.

02:01:21.380 | They want to develop.

02:01:22.840 | Somebody in the United States, somebody in Europe, somebody in the EU, somebody in Britain.

02:01:26.940 | He will, he will now fight for the Moldovan parliament.

02:01:33.240 | This is his second step.

02:01:34.840 | You will see in April what happens.

02:01:37.840 | You will see, oh, he will start turning Moldova away, away from Europe, although they want

02:01:42.900 | to go there.

02:01:44.120 | He does not care.

02:01:45.120 | He will be a pro-Russian party and they will do something with the current president because

02:01:50.720 | she, she has, she has won the elections.

02:01:54.040 | She is pro-European, but he, he will turn this back.

02:01:58.640 | The next steps are completely clear.

02:02:02.160 | He will do everything wherever he has lost influence, where there was influence, influence

02:02:08.360 | of the Soviet Union.

02:02:10.160 | He'll turn it back as much as possible.

02:02:13.080 | And we understand at what price.

02:02:14.820 | You have seen Syria.

02:02:16.660 | You saw these tortures, what we saw in Bucha, what we saw everywhere we came and where our

02:02:22.680 | territories were occupied.

02:02:24.280 | In Syria, the same happened.

02:02:26.400 | There were a thousand people there and you have seen it.

02:02:29.400 | Scientists were found, doctors were found.

02:02:32.960 | It is clear that any people are capable of generating their own opinion, show their skills,

02:02:41.760 | shape society, everyone who can express an opinion, everyone who can shape the independence

02:02:49.160 | and maturity of society.

02:02:51.100 | Such people are not needed.

02:02:52.900 | And he wants this in Ukraine.

02:02:55.520 | And therefore everyone should understand that Ukraine is like a large wall.

02:03:05.860 | On that, Europe, and if God willing, President Trump does not withdraw from NATO.

02:03:12.020 | Because again, I believe that this is the biggest risk.

02:03:15.260 | I think two steps, two steps that Putin would like to see is a weak NATO.

02:03:25.880 | And this without Trump and a weak Ukraine, which cannot survive on the battlefield, simply

02:03:34.780 | cannot survive and prevent me from building a strong relationship with Trump.

02:03:41.660 | I think these two steps leaving NATO and Ukraine's weakness will lead to a large scale war, which

02:03:51.300 | Putin will wage on all the territories of that Europe, post-Soviet Europe.

02:03:57.940 | I mean, Soviet Europe, not post-Soviet, but post-World War II period.

02:04:03.680 | That is Soviet Europe, Soviet era Europe, in order to completely control everything

02:04:11.860 | there.

02:04:12.860 | This is what he will do.

02:04:13.980 | And besides this, this will happen in any case, even if the US is thinking about leaving

02:04:21.620 | NATO.

02:04:26.640 | This war will affect the United States because North Korea is the first sign.

02:04:33.620 | North Korean skills, North Korean knowledge, which they are now gaining from this war.

02:04:40.460 | These include mastering new technologies, large scale drones, missiles, how it works,

02:04:48.220 | the kind of technological war we have today, cyber war, et cetera.

02:04:52.780 | All these skills Korea will bring home and scale up in that region.

02:04:58.060 | And this will be a risk for the Pacific region, security first and foremost.

02:05:04.540 | For Japan and for South Korea, they will face these risks a hundred percent.

02:05:11.140 | And it will be clear that Taiwan will also have to face them.

02:05:19.180 | Without this, it is impossible.

02:05:22.780 | This is already happening.

02:05:24.460 | Therefore, I think that President Trump has all power to stop Putin and give Ukraine strong

02:05:36.280 | security guarantees.

02:05:40.660 | We've been talking for two hours at the pause.

02:05:43.780 | You want to take the break?

02:05:45.100 | Yeah, we will.

02:05:46.100 | We will make a pause.

02:05:47.900 | We can have coffee, right?

02:05:49.700 | Coffee?

02:05:50.700 | Let's do it.

02:05:51.700 | Yeah.

02:05:53.700 | And give the interpreter.

02:05:55.060 | He's struggling.

02:05:56.060 | Yeah.

02:05:57.060 | Some water.

02:05:58.060 | Some water.

02:05:59.060 | We keep switching languages.

02:06:01.860 | Like a dragon, you know, three heads, three translators.

02:06:06.060 | So one of the difficult decisions you had to make when the war began is to enact martial

02:06:14.500 | law.

02:06:16.620 | So when you won the presidency, you were the warrior for freedom.

02:06:21.660 | In fact, this war is for freedom.

02:06:25.140 | For freedom of the individual, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom.

02:06:31.740 | But a lot of freedoms had to be curtailed, sacrificed in this fight, because there's

02:06:37.780 | so much focus on the war.

02:06:40.740 | Do you see the tension?

02:06:41.980 | Do you feel the tension of that?

02:06:43.380 | The sacrifice that had to be made in democracy, in freedom, in fighting this war.

02:06:52.140 | In any case, this war is for our freedom.

02:06:57.300 | Generally speaking, to be honest, when you understand over time, when the war passes,

02:07:05.740 | you understand that your main values are at home.

02:07:10.980 | This is your home, your children, your love.

02:07:15.980 | God willing, parents are alive.

02:07:19.180 | And if, and if not alive, then their memory visiting their grave.

02:07:26.620 | Choosing how to work, how much, preferably choosing where to work.

02:07:33.100 | All this is freedom.

02:07:35.460 | Freedoms are not just a desire.

02:07:37.700 | They are an opportunity.

02:07:39.220 | In any case, you are right, because war is a limitation of opportunities.

02:07:46.340 | In any case, you fight for these opportunities.

02:07:51.580 | Your parents, your parents and God gave you life, right?

02:07:57.100 | You fight for your life, your life.

02:08:00.700 | But we need to understand that first there is a war, and then martial law is introduced.

02:08:06.580 | Martial law is not introduced because someone wanted to.

02:08:09.980 | You say this is not Pinochet, this is not Pinochet, and so on.

02:08:14.100 | This is a completely different story.

02:08:16.660 | An aggressor came, and according to your legislation, if the border is violated, if there is armed

02:08:22.980 | aggression, you have all this written down, long ago written out in legislation.

02:08:27.540 | You introduce martial law, and the introduction of martial law everywhere, at all times, means,

02:08:34.500 | in any case, a restriction of opportunities.

02:08:37.260 | If opportunities are limited, rights and freedoms are restricted, therefore the war itself restricts

02:08:42.980 | rights and freedoms.

02:08:44.580 | Yes, and you can't do anything about it.

02:08:49.260 | We try, honestly, to balance as much as possible.

02:08:56.260 | I believe that the business sector works despite the difficulties of the war.

02:09:01.820 | And we do everything, somewhere, you know, there, somewhere, to reduce some load, unfortunately.

02:09:09.020 | We cannot reduce taxes.

02:09:12.860 | On the contrary, a military tax is used for war.

02:09:16.400 | You need to take money somewhere.

02:09:18.100 | This, by the way, is about the fact, the fact that the U.S. gave us a lot, and Europe too.

02:09:25.020 | But compared to how much we needed for the war, this is not all.

02:09:31.100 | Because for military salaries, you know, you know that we could not pay the salaries of

02:09:36.140 | a million-strong army.

02:09:38.220 | We could not pay it using the money from our partners.

02:09:41.260 | These are all expenses.

02:09:43.480 | This is all the money that the country and people have accumulated.

02:09:50.780 | You can't do anything.

02:09:51.780 | I really want to reduce taxes, I will tell you frankly.

02:09:54.660 | I really want to.

02:09:55.660 | Well, I think that the whole new tax system, new deregulation, new steps, new reforms,

02:10:01.940 | all this will be after the war.

02:10:04.180 | Although there is something to brag about, this is proof.

02:10:08.340 | And this, this is a document, because if you want to get a candidacy for European Union,

02:10:19.540 | you must implement the appropriate number of reforms.

02:10:22.280 | We do everything.

02:10:24.780 | During the war, we voted for many reforms, including anti-corruption, banking reforms,

02:10:30.740 | land reforms, major reforms.

02:10:33.100 | We started a large privatization, and the war did not stop us.

02:10:38.060 | Yes, it slowed down, but we went through a lot.

02:10:42.440 | When do you think you will hold elections?

02:10:45.280 | Because for people who don't know, part of the martial law, elections were suspended,

02:10:49.020 | and they were delayed and delayed and delayed.

02:10:51.020 | And I think the next sort of plan is in February of 2025.

02:10:57.180 | But when do you think there will be presidential elections in Ukraine?

02:11:03.220 | Elections were postponed once.

02:11:05.980 | They were not delayed, to be clear.

02:11:08.500 | Elections did not take place in 2024.

02:11:11.660 | That year, first of all, we need to understand the Constitution.

02:11:15.660 | They were scheduled to be held in the spring of 2024.

02:11:21.060 | Due to martial law, under the Constitution, you cannot do this.

02:11:27.580 | These are the presidential elections.

02:11:29.340 | The parliamentary elections did not take place in the fall of 2024, according to the Constitution.

02:11:38.460 | Yes, there are security things.

02:11:40.860 | There is the Constitution, but there are security things.

02:11:44.540 | That is, everyone in Ukraine understands that this cannot be done until the war is over

02:11:49.420 | or legislation needs to be changed.

02:11:51.980 | I believe that elections will take place immediately after the end of martial law.

02:11:57.220 | This is according to the law.

02:11:58.900 | Or members of the parliament need to get together and change legislation, which will be very

02:12:05.940 | difficult to do because society is against it.

02:12:09.180 | Why is society against it?

02:12:13.640 | It is understandable why.

02:12:16.360 | Because we want elections that we want to trust.

02:12:20.940 | 8.5 million people went abroad.

02:12:25.780 | The infrastructure needs to be created for these millions of people to vote.

02:12:31.740 | Millions of people in the occupied territories.

02:12:34.220 | I'm not even talking about the occupation of 2014.

02:12:37.820 | I'm talking about the occupation right now.

02:12:41.220 | What to do with these people?

02:12:43.740 | This is a difficult question.

02:12:46.020 | And one of the most unfair ones is how to vote without having a million soldiers.

02:12:55.700 | That is, it is impossible.

02:12:57.500 | We need to think about how to change the system.

02:13:00.600 | If the elections are held in times of war, change the legislation, which should include

02:13:05.880 | changes to the voting system.

02:13:08.340 | To think about online voting.

02:13:10.620 | Everyone is afraid because of certain attacks, like cyber attacks and so on.

02:13:18.860 | But we need to think about it.

02:13:20.780 | I really think that it's possible that we can end the war in 2025.

02:13:28.060 | In January.

02:13:29.060 | We've already agreed on it.

02:13:30.460 | I would very much like to.

02:13:32.860 | I would very much like to.

02:13:34.820 | After the war?

02:13:35.940 | And immediately.

02:13:37.740 | Yes, immediately.

02:13:39.660 | In the year of the end of the war.

02:13:41.140 | It's a fact.

02:13:42.140 | Why?

02:13:43.820 | Because when martial law ends, you can immediately vote in Parliament to hold elections.

02:13:50.460 | And then everyone, everyone will vote.

02:13:54.640 | Because there are no restrictive measures.

02:13:56.660 | And after they vote, I think elections can be held in 90 days, something, something like

02:14:02.500 | that.

02:14:03.700 | Yes.

02:14:05.020 | And this means that immediately after the end of the war, elections may take place in

02:14:09.820 | 90 days.

02:14:10.820 | Are you running for re-election?

02:14:14.540 | Even I don't know, really.

02:14:15.540 | I don't know.

02:14:16.540 | I don't know.

02:14:18.380 | It is a very difficult question.

02:14:21.420 | It depends on how this war will finish.

02:14:25.180 | It depends on what people will want.

02:14:29.060 | Mostly, it depends on people.

02:14:34.540 | Most of all, and of course, my family.

02:14:38.380 | We had no time to speak about it with my family and of course, didn't have a chance because

02:14:47.260 | we don't think about it now.

02:14:48.940 | I mean, it's something, you know, there are a lot of, some, not a lot of, but enough voices

02:14:55.540 | in Ukraine from politicians, opposition and etc. about this, I guess.

02:15:03.620 | But we don't think really seriously, didn't think seriously with my family about it.

02:15:11.020 | So, this is war.

02:15:12.500 | I mean, how to think about what will be after.

02:15:15.060 | It's very difficult, really very difficult.

02:15:18.660 | If we look at the field of candidates, I just, maybe you can give your opinion about the

02:15:24.620 | set of ideas you see out there, including your own, about the future of Ukraine.

02:15:29.700 | As I understand, the candidates include Poroshenko, Zaluzhny, Aistovich, Budanov, Klitschko, and

02:15:36.700 | many others.

02:15:38.020 | This is the internet speaking to me.

02:15:40.980 | What do you think of the space of ideas that these candidates represent?

02:15:43.900 | You know, I think it can be, there can be even a bigger number of candidates.

02:15:48.300 | Yeah, I don't really know what will be.

02:15:51.740 | They have rights to participate if they want to.

02:15:54.420 | Yes, if they really want to and can, they can go and do what they want.

02:15:59.660 | I honestly, most important is what are they doing now?

02:16:04.540 | I think that all these people are famous Ukrainian people and it's important for them to do everything

02:16:12.940 | they can today, not begin any election campaign.

02:16:17.420 | I think this what can divide our people to have the elections, you know, during the war.

02:16:23.500 | I mean, this make steps, speak about elections a lot, you know, make a big mess about it.

02:16:29.540 | I think this is not right.

02:16:31.100 | That's why I'm not agreeing with some of these people, but they can and they, I think that

02:16:38.820 | they can and maybe some of them will and it's okay.

02:16:42.980 | It's normal.

02:16:44.180 | It's very normal.

02:16:45.660 | Our system differs from the system in the United States.

02:16:48.380 | You have two parties and the parties decide who will be the leader.

02:16:52.140 | And in Ukraine, everybody can participate.

02:16:55.020 | Let them.

02:16:57.460 | You think you're going to win the debate?

02:17:01.140 | You versus Zelensky, Poroshenko, and you decide to run.

02:17:06.860 | Do you think you're going to win the debate?

02:17:09.020 | Or you're again focused on the war?

02:17:10.980 | I'm really focusing on the war and I think the most difficult debate is what will be

02:17:21.780 | brought to the table.

02:17:22.900 | And we spoke about it.

02:17:24.140 | It will be during the war.

02:17:25.820 | How to finish the war?

02:17:26.820 | I think that is my goal because it will be one of my most complicated debates and for

02:17:33.700 | any president who is in a war, of course, but I think this is my goal to win those debates.

02:17:41.660 | And the other things are not, not for today.

02:17:45.020 | As I said, the dream I have is it's a historic opportunity to make peace, to make lasting

02:17:53.340 | peace soon.

02:17:56.180 | So I'm glad you're focused on that.

02:17:58.100 | Let me ask a question about that.

02:18:01.020 | A lot of people in the United States think about, and I care a lot about, about the future

02:18:07.700 | of Ukraine is corruption.

02:18:10.060 | This is something you have cared a lot about for a long time.

02:18:14.460 | You won the presidency 2019 in big part, your message of fighting corruption.

02:18:20.780 | But there's a lot of accusations that during war, I mentioned $9 trillion in the United

02:18:26.780 | States, war breeds corruption.

02:18:31.580 | So can you speak to that, how you have been fighting corruption and you, can you respond

02:18:37.300 | to the accusations that has been corruption in Ukraine?

02:18:41.940 | You know, it's very simple.

02:18:42.940 | First of all, we really have a very sophisticated anti-corruption system, sophisticated not

02:18:50.020 | in the sense that it's difficult to understand, but in that it really consists of many elements.

02:18:55.380 | It's the most sophisticated in all of Europe.

02:18:59.340 | This is another requirement of the European Union.

02:19:02.200 | It was a requirement for Ukraine.

02:19:05.620 | And for many years, Ukraine was not trusted.

02:19:08.740 | I want to tell you that under me, we all voted for bills, all the anti-corruption reforms,

02:19:15.740 | all, well, almost all reforms and all anti-corruption bodies today are independent.

02:19:23.000 | They work as requested.

02:19:25.940 | I still believe that they are not perfect yet.

02:19:28.580 | There are many issues.

02:19:29.580 | There is a judicial system, but also a judicial reform that our partners, the United States

02:19:35.500 | plus the EU demanded from us.

02:19:38.700 | This is all written out.

02:19:40.200 | This is written out in specific laws, in specific decrees, in specific decisions.

02:19:46.080 | We did this.

02:19:47.420 | We've done 99% of this.

02:19:50.880 | If something has not been done, it means that it is on the way.

02:19:54.500 | But in principle, all this exists and there is no such system as we have in Europe.

02:19:59.120 | To say that we do not have corruption would be lying.

02:20:03.080 | We just talk about it openly.

02:20:05.640 | We are genuinely fighting against it.

02:20:07.960 | Look, we have sitting in our prison Ihor Kolomoisky, who is the most influential Ukrainian oligarch

02:20:18.920 | since independence.

02:20:21.320 | And no one could do anything about him.

02:20:22.840 | The United States of America wanted to have Kolomoisky and they went to great lengths

02:20:27.080 | because of money laundering, et cetera.

02:20:29.640 | There are criminal cases in the United States, I think in Delaware, something like that.

02:20:35.360 | Neither Europe could do anything about it.

02:20:37.360 | That is, we did a lot with oligarchs, Russian oligarchs, sanctions were imposed.

02:20:43.480 | They were thrown out.

02:20:44.680 | Some of them fled the state, but they are all under sanctions.

02:20:49.840 | We exchanged some of them for our soldiers, such as Medvedchuk, to whose daughter Putin

02:20:55.800 | is godfather.

02:20:58.220 | That is, we fought against the strongest influential oligarchs, which are and were

02:21:07.740 | in Ukraine and we eliminated a lot of corruption.

02:21:10.380 | Of course, corruption exists in everyday life.

02:21:13.340 | It exists.

02:21:14.620 | But institutionally, I am sure that Ukraine will overcome all this.

02:21:19.820 | This takes a little time.

02:21:21.060 | I would say honestly that, listen, what we call corruption and in some state of the world

02:21:30.500 | is called lobbyism, but this does not mean that there is no corruption there.

02:21:37.140 | Let's take the aid you mentioned during the war.

02:21:41.740 | First of all, we have no money.

02:21:46.240 | We have no money except for the war.

02:21:51.460 | We received weapons from the United States of America, from Europe.

02:21:55.720 | If we take, for example, money from the United States of America.

02:22:00.940 | During all this time of the war, around 177 billion have been voted for or decided upon.

02:22:10.100 | 177 billion.

02:22:13.820 | Let's be honest, we have not received half of this money.

02:22:21.060 | The second point, which is very important just as an example, is it corruption?

02:22:26.540 | The first question, whose corruption?

02:22:29.940 | This is the second.

02:22:32.180 | Here is just one small example for you.

02:22:36.020 | The United States began to transfer us weapons.

02:22:39.700 | It was American money, but American weapons, money for these weapons.

02:22:48.700 | As a president, I had cargo jets, not in Ukraine because of the war.

02:22:54.580 | We moved them very quickly to Europe.

02:22:56.980 | We had cargo.

02:22:58.380 | We have good cargo fleet, very good, because of Antonov.

02:23:05.740 | So I asked American side to grant me the opportunity because our jets are at another, yeah, airfield.

02:23:18.620 | And I asked America to give me the opportunity to use our jets for transfer, not to pay a

02:23:27.660 | lot.

02:23:28.860 | To whom?

02:23:29.860 | To your companies, to American companies.

02:23:32.420 | No, I didn't get this opportunity.

02:23:36.340 | My jets stayed put.

02:23:38.900 | And the United States jets, cargo jets, moved these weapons.

02:23:44.940 | But everywhere you have to spend money.

02:23:48.700 | So we could get more weapons, but we have to pay for this very expensive fleet.

02:23:59.060 | My question, is this corruption or not?

02:24:02.860 | Or lobbyism?

02:24:04.860 | What is it?

02:24:05.900 | You mean corruption on the part of the U.S. companies?

02:24:08.860 | Yes, making such decisions.

02:24:10.140 | Yes, I got it.

02:24:11.140 | The lobbying for such decisions involves some companies that make these decisions.

02:24:16.300 | But I can't be open about it, and I couldn't speak loudly about it.

02:24:19.540 | I didn't want, nor did I intend to cause any scandals to arise, because otherwise you can

02:24:25.340 | freeze the support, and that's it.

02:24:27.380 | And that's why when we talk about corruption, we must ask, who is involved?

02:24:33.180 | If we had 177, and if we get the half, where is the half?

02:24:40.860 | If you will find the second half, you will find corruption.

02:24:45.460 | There is a perception of corruption.

02:24:47.940 | People like Donald Trump and Elon Musk really care about fighting corruption.

02:24:54.860 | What can you say to them to gain their trust that the money is going towards this fight

02:25:00.460 | for freedom, towards the war effort?

02:25:03.420 | In most cases, we did not receive money, we received weapons.

02:25:08.220 | And where we saw risks that something could be happening with weapons, we cracked down

02:25:12.980 | hard on everyone.

02:25:14.140 | And believe me, this is not only about Ukraine.

02:25:17.620 | Everywhere along the supply chain, there are some or other people and companies who want

02:25:23.820 | to make money.

02:25:24.940 | They try to make money on the war.

02:25:26.980 | We did not profit from the war.

02:25:28.820 | If we caught someone, believe me, we cracked down hard on them.

02:25:33.780 | And we did that.

02:25:35.180 | We did that.

02:25:36.380 | And we will continue to do so, because to this day, when someone says that Ukraine was

02:25:43.140 | selling weapons, and by the way, Russia was the one pushing this narrative, we always

02:25:49.140 | responded, our soldiers would kill such people with their own hands, without any trial.

02:25:56.820 | Do you honestly think anyone could steal weapons by the truckload when we ourselves don't have

02:26:01.780 | enough on the front lines, and yet we have to provide proof to defend ourselves?

02:26:06.580 | Because when there's an abundance of such misinformation, distrust starts to grow.

02:26:13.300 | And you're right, people listen to various media outlets, see this, and lose faith in

02:26:17.860 | you.

02:26:18.940 | In the end, you lose trust.

02:26:21.820 | And with it, you lose support.

02:26:25.020 | Therefore, believe me, we are fighting more against disinformation than against particular

02:26:31.220 | cases, although I still emphasize once again, at the everyday level, such things are still

02:26:39.100 | important.

02:26:40.100 | We catch these, these people, and we fight them.

02:27:00.180 | First of all, I had a conversation with him at the beginning of the war.

02:27:05.220 | I talked with him.

02:27:08.940 | I respect him, first and foremost.

02:27:13.020 | I respect the self-made man, right?

02:27:15.000 | In English, I love such people.

02:27:17.500 | You know, no one and nothing fell into their lap, but the man did something, did it all

02:27:22.940 | himself.

02:27:24.100 | I worked myself, created a big production company.

02:27:28.380 | And I know what it means to make money, to make money, to select talented people, to

02:27:33.780 | impart knowledge to them, to invest money, and to create something, something important

02:27:41.100 | for certain people, you know.

02:27:43.580 | And I'm not, I'm not comparing myself to Musk.

02:27:46.660 | He just, well, the man is a great leader of innovations in the world.

02:27:54.740 | And I believe that such people move the world forward.

02:27:59.300 | Therefore, I respect the result of his work.

02:28:06.340 | And we see this result.

02:28:08.460 | And for me, it has always been important that your result can be used, that these are not

02:28:13.580 | words but facts.

02:28:16.940 | Let's take the war.

02:28:20.020 | We are very grateful for Starlink.

02:28:22.740 | It has helped.

02:28:24.300 | We used it after Russian missile attacks on the energy infrastructure.

02:28:29.080 | There were problems with the internet, et cetera, with connection.

02:28:32.660 | We used Starlink both at the front and in kindergartens.

02:28:36.580 | It was used in schools.

02:28:38.220 | It helped children.

02:28:39.860 | We used it in various infrastructure, and it helped us very much.

02:28:46.260 | And I would very much like Elon to be on our side as much as possible to support us.

02:28:56.980 | And yes, I am grateful to him for Starlink.

02:28:59.680 | Truly I am.

02:29:00.680 | First of all, so that our guys have a connection, and children too.

02:29:08.340 | And I am really, I am really grateful to him for that.

02:29:13.020 | I think we need, I would like him to come to Ukraine, to talk to people here, and to

02:29:19.280 | look around, and so on.

02:29:21.560 | Has Elon visited Kiev or Ukraine yet?

02:29:24.020 | No.

02:29:25.020 | I hope the Kiev airport will open soon.

02:29:27.720 | Then it will, it will be easier to fly in.

02:29:30.140 | Yes, I am, I am looking forward to it.

02:29:34.140 | Maybe we will open it, but only, and you must understand if the war is over, there must

02:29:38.540 | be sustainable peace and air defense systems, to be honest.

02:29:43.180 | And we must ensure that they are long-lasting and effective.

02:29:46.580 | Let's take the airport, for example, and let's focus on the airport in Rzeszów, which you

02:29:52.380 | know very well, as it is handling important cargo for Ukraine in Poland.

02:29:57.620 | And there are Patriot systems there, because everyone understands what the risk is.

02:30:01.820 | Well, Russia is a risk, and therefore we need air defense systems.

02:30:06.300 | And today, today take, for example, the air defense system of one city or another that

02:30:12.500 | is being shelled, and move it, move it to the airport.

02:30:16.340 | Well, that would be dishonest.

02:30:19.200 | People are more important than planes.

02:30:22.740 | But there will be a moment, and Trump, by the way, I think that the war will end, and

02:30:28.020 | President Trump may be the first leader to travel here by airplane.

02:30:33.180 | I think it would be, it would be symbolic by airplane.

02:30:36.540 | Again, January 25th, around that date, right?

02:30:39.500 | Flying in, meeting the Air Force One.

02:30:41.780 | That would be cool.

02:30:42.780 | Elon Musk.

02:30:43.780 | I will meet you there for the second time, too.

02:30:46.060 | On the plane.

02:30:47.060 | With pleasure.

02:30:48.060 | And you, by the way, before I forget, let me ask, are you coming on January 20th for

02:30:55.980 | President Trump's inauguration?

02:30:58.060 | I would like to, of course.

02:31:02.340 | I will be considering.

02:31:04.860 | What is happening then in the war?

02:31:07.220 | Because there are moments of difficulties, escalation, many missiles, etc.

02:31:13.340 | But honestly, well, I can't.

02:31:16.420 | I can't come, especially during the war, unless President Trump invites me personally.

02:31:23.180 | I'm not sure it's proper to come because I know that in general leaders are, for some

02:31:28.260 | reason, not usually invited to the inauguration of presidents of the United States of America.

02:31:36.820 | Well, and I know that there are leaders who can simply come, want to come and will come.

02:31:44.620 | Yeah, I know.

02:31:47.220 | And I know the temperament of some of these people.

02:31:51.620 | They can come at their discretion.

02:31:53.820 | This is very, very difficult for me.

02:31:56.740 | I am the kind of person that cannot come without an invitation.

02:32:02.380 | This is Putin.

02:32:03.380 | We did not invite him.

02:32:04.460 | He came to us, so to say.

02:32:06.740 | And me?

02:32:08.300 | I can't do that.

02:32:09.580 | No, but didn't he publicly say that it would be great if you came to the inauguration?

02:32:13.860 | Or you mean, did he invite it officially?

02:32:15.820 | Oh, wait, look, look, look, listen, I am against any bureaucracy.

02:32:19.740 | I get rid of it as as much as I can.

02:32:23.500 | But, well, you know, there are some complexities involving security.

02:32:30.340 | I decide and I fly.

02:32:32.740 | And the United States of America officially provides security.

02:32:37.660 | Not that I need this, mind you.

02:32:39.180 | I do not ask for helicopters to fly around and protect me.

02:32:42.220 | But they will simply do it themselves.

02:32:44.580 | The security service itself.

02:32:46.000 | They had to do it.

02:32:47.220 | I don't want it.

02:32:48.220 | And sometimes I don't need it.

02:32:49.700 | And I'm asking them.

02:32:51.540 | It was, for example, before the war.

02:32:55.380 | I think.

02:32:56.380 | Yes, it was before.

02:32:57.380 | Before the war.

02:32:58.380 | I just I just I had a meeting.

02:32:59.380 | Yes.

02:33:00.380 | With President Trump.

02:33:01.380 | It was in 2019.

02:33:02.820 | I just wanted just wanted to go for a run early in the morning because I really wanted

02:33:06.780 | to exercise.

02:33:08.380 | And they those tall bodyguards, a lot of them, they decided to join me.

02:33:13.620 | But I couldn't really do it because they were in suits and I was in sportswear.

02:33:18.300 | I said, no, I can't.

02:33:20.060 | It's always funny.

02:33:21.060 | You know, I'm not I don't want to, you know, I don't want to disturb anybody and cause

02:33:26.740 | anyone problems with me.

02:33:28.820 | And that's that's why if if he will invite me.

02:33:33.820 | I will come.

02:33:34.820 | I thought he invited you.

02:33:36.820 | Yeah.

02:33:37.820 | Yeah.

02:33:38.820 | I thought he publicly invited you.

02:33:39.820 | But OK.

02:33:40.820 | I hope to see you there.

02:33:41.820 | I think they had to do some of their steps.

02:33:44.660 | I don't know.

02:33:45.660 | But.

02:33:46.660 | Step.

02:33:47.660 | Yeah.

02:33:48.660 | The stamp was missing.

02:33:49.660 | But with pleasure, with my wife, of course, and and I think it's important.

02:33:54.220 | It's important.

02:33:55.220 | All right.

02:33:56.540 | Let's get back to a serious question.

02:33:58.460 | Sometimes they say it in America, this question of who is really in power.

02:34:02.780 | So let me ask.

02:34:04.780 | Is someone controlling you?

02:34:06.900 | For example, oligarchs.

02:34:09.560 | American politicians.

02:34:10.560 | Yermak.

02:34:11.560 | I wanted to bring this up because.

02:34:17.960 | I have been here in Ukraine since the twice since the invasion of 2022.

02:34:25.720 | And one of the things I've learned, well, is that.

02:34:29.600 | Actually nobody controls you.

02:34:31.120 | And this is this is one of your strengths as a president, as a person that oligarchs.

02:34:39.440 | And other rich and powerful people like that cannot control you.

02:34:42.440 | Can you explain why that is, how you see it?

02:34:44.640 | I think.

02:34:46.840 | And it is indeed true.

02:34:49.240 | That I'm generally difficult to deal with.

02:34:52.920 | I am.

02:34:54.880 | An ambitious person.

02:34:57.120 | I can't submit to anyone.

02:34:59.720 | I can live by rules, by laws.

02:35:02.720 | I believe that this is the only thing that can control any person today.

02:35:10.040 | These are the rules and laws.

02:35:13.280 | Of the society or state where you live.

02:35:16.680 | And I believe that this is the most important thing.

02:35:20.400 | There is no person who could control me.

02:35:22.700 | As I once told President Trump, when we had a meeting, by the way, journalists asked if

02:35:28.880 | Trump influenced me during the phone call.

02:35:32.400 | I told him, I told the journalists the truth then.

02:35:35.960 | Who can influence me?

02:35:37.560 | Only my my boy, my son.

02:35:40.500 | This is a fact.

02:35:41.520 | When he calls asking for something, well, then I lift up my arms.

02:35:44.960 | Yes.

02:35:45.960 | And I cannot do anything about it because children are children.

02:35:49.400 | I have so little time with them.

02:35:51.080 | And therefore, when there are these moments, they are precious and important to me.

02:35:55.160 | I am ready to do anything.

02:35:58.680 | So probably my parents.

02:36:01.680 | They are an authority for me.

02:36:04.440 | Beyond that.

02:36:06.200 | I view it more as a system.

02:36:09.080 | No one can control the president.

02:36:11.400 | Therefore, we have oligarchs who either fled or are in prison because oligarchs usually

02:36:17.140 | control cash flows and people and influence politics.

02:36:22.080 | And we have concrete examples with sentences.

02:36:25.480 | They are not just under house arrest, not just that.

02:36:28.560 | There are some judgments under which their assets were frozen or sanctions were imposed.

02:36:33.680 | There are specific people who are behind bars.

02:36:36.760 | I think this is the answer regarding the influence.

02:36:39.440 | Would they like to influence me in the same way as any president of Ukraine?

02:36:44.080 | Because finance and cash flows always influence politics.

02:36:48.880 | Well, at least they want to do this.

02:36:54.120 | This is regarding the influence.

02:36:56.680 | And other people on the vertical, they perform tasks as my managers.

02:37:04.120 | Andrey, you mentioned is one of those managers.

02:37:09.160 | Well, I am glad that I have such people.

02:37:15.400 | Well, probably there is nothing else to add here.

02:37:19.680 | I will just say that your team that I spoke with is an excellent team.

02:37:24.640 | Excellent people.

02:37:25.640 | Thank you.

02:37:26.640 | Okay.

02:37:27.640 | One last question.

02:37:28.640 | The future of Ukraine.

02:37:29.640 | If you look 5, 10, 20 years into the future, what can help Ukraine flourish economically,

02:37:34.880 | culturally, politically in the future?

02:37:37.840 | Digital.

02:37:39.360 | It's very important.

02:37:41.520 | Digitalization of all the process.

02:37:42.880 | We began this work.

02:37:43.880 | We have special ministry of digital transformation.

02:37:47.040 | Yeah, so this is very good.

02:37:50.520 | And we also have our DIA.

02:37:51.960 | This is the name for all of these services.

02:37:54.440 | Yeah.

02:37:55.440 | So I think that is the most important.

02:37:57.840 | This is, again, this is not only convenient.

02:38:01.080 | That will cancel all the, any possibilities for future corruption, because you don't have

02:38:07.320 | any, you know, you don't have any personal connections with people in the government

02:38:11.400 | or elsewhere.

02:38:12.600 | So you're just on your phone or any other device.

02:38:16.120 | That's it.

02:38:17.120 | And I think we are doing very well.

02:38:18.880 | We are the best in Europe.

02:38:20.480 | All of Europe recognizes it.

02:38:22.480 | Some countries of the African Union asked us to provide this, the same service.

02:38:28.720 | And we will do it after the war immediately.

02:38:31.920 | And I think that we can bring money to Ukraine from this.

02:38:35.480 | And I think what we also need, we need a tax reform.

02:38:39.160 | I think it will be very important for the businesses to return.

02:38:43.840 | A lot of support will come, I think, from USA business investment, not as direct aid

02:38:50.720 | to us, just to the private sector and resources.

02:38:55.040 | And I mentioned this to President Trump and to some European leaders who are our key strategic

02:39:00.600 | partners that will be happy, especially with the Americans, will be happy to sign these

02:39:05.640 | contracts and engage in joint investments in many areas.

02:39:12.040 | And and I think we can we can develop oil, gas, green energy, including solar power.

02:39:18.240 | And we already have the resources.

02:39:20.240 | We can invest money into this.

02:39:22.040 | We have oil reserves in the Black Sea that we can we can exploit.

02:39:27.760 | And we need your expertise and the investment of your companies.

02:39:34.080 | We have gold and uranium reserves, the largest in Europe, by the way, which is also very

02:39:40.200 | important.

02:39:41.200 | For example, Russia has pushed France out of Africa.

02:39:45.120 | They urgently need uranium, which we have.

02:39:47.360 | So we are ready to open up for investments.

02:39:50.920 | And this will give us, of course, opportunities, jobs for people, revenue.

02:39:57.580 | I don't want cheap labor, honestly.

02:39:59.920 | What I truly want, especially after the war, to open up for those people who can really

02:40:04.840 | contribute and earn.

02:40:07.600 | Yes, and give a reason to the eight million people to come back.

02:40:11.880 | Yes.

02:40:12.880 | It's so important.

02:40:14.440 | And they will come and we will recover and rebuild Ukraine.

02:40:19.200 | We will be very open to companies.

02:40:22.040 | And of course, we will welcome people back.

02:40:25.360 | It's so important culturally.

02:40:28.560 | I think the most important thing is to remain open and not change our direction, because

02:40:33.520 | culturally aligning with Russia, it's one idea, while aligning with Europe is another.

02:40:39.280 | Our people have chosen Europe.

02:40:41.240 | It's their choice.

02:40:42.400 | It's our choice, the choice of our nation.

02:40:44.360 | And I think it's very important.

02:40:45.520 | But first, you have to end the war.

02:40:47.320 | Yes, you're right.

02:40:48.420 | And we will.

02:40:49.760 | We want peace, you know, I mean, just to make it clear, we want peace.

02:40:55.760 | Just what I always say, you have to come to Ukraine and see for yourself and people will

02:41:00.360 | tell you, no, we can't forgive those murderers who took our our lives, but we still want

02:41:10.320 | to make peace.

02:41:12.680 | And honestly, I think that the highest approval rating of the president of the United States

02:41:18.840 | of Trump now is in Ukraine.

02:41:25.000 | People really believe that he can truly help bring peace.

02:41:33.260 | Now they have faith, faith that he can make it happen, that he can support Ukraine and

02:41:40.800 | he can stop Putin and that he will make sure Putin doesn't get everything he wants.

02:41:48.000 | This is very important.

02:41:49.600 | And it's why we believe that we must not lose this opportunity.

02:41:53.960 | I hope you find the path to peace.

02:41:56.900 | Thank you.

02:41:57.900 | Thank you so much.

02:41:58.900 | Thank you for talking.

02:41:59.900 | Thank you for coming.

02:42:00.900 | Thank you.

02:42:01.900 | Thank you.

02:42:02.900 | Thank you.

02:42:03.900 | Yeah.

02:42:04.900 | You you started.

02:42:05.900 | Thank you very much.

02:42:10.220 | Thank you for listening to this conversation with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

02:42:16.720 | And now let me answer some questions and try to reflect on and articulate some things I've

02:42:22.240 | been thinking about.

02:42:23.720 | If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to LexFriedman.com/AMA

02:42:30.580 | or to contact me for whatever other reason, go to LexFriedman.com/contact.

02:42:34.280 | First, I got a bunch of questions about this.

02:42:40.040 | So let me chat about the topic of language and let's say the mechanics of multilingual

02:42:46.160 | conversation.

02:42:48.220 | Perhaps the details are interesting to some people.

02:42:50.820 | It also allows me to reflect back on the puzzle of it in this episode and what I can do better

02:42:56.560 | next time.

02:42:58.340 | I already explained in the intro the symbolic, historic, and geopolitical complexity of the

02:43:03.320 | choice of language in the conversation with President Zelensky.

02:43:08.120 | As I said, the Russian language is one that the president speaks fluently and was his

02:43:12.920 | primary language for most of his life.

02:43:15.280 | I speak Russian fluently as well.

02:43:18.840 | It's the only common language we are both fluent in, so any other combination of languages

02:43:23.640 | required an interpreter, including when I spoke English.

02:43:28.060 | He did need an interpreter when I spoke English and, just like I was, was visibly encumbered

02:43:35.200 | and annoyed by the process of interpretation.

02:43:39.040 | This is why I tried to speak in Russian to the president instead of English, so that

02:43:42.940 | he can directly understand me without an interpreter.

02:43:46.960 | I'm willing to take the hit for that, as I am for everything else.

02:43:51.640 | I'm not trying to protect myself.

02:43:53.200 | I'm trying to do whatever is best for the conversation, for understanding, though it

02:43:59.560 | has been getting harder and harder to stay open, vulnerable, and raw in public while

02:44:06.440 | the swarms of chanting internet mobs stop by with their torches and their color-coded

02:44:13.320 | hats, flags, frogs, pronouns, and hashtags.

02:44:17.240 | Anyway, there is a lot of nuanced aspects of the conversational language that I would

02:44:23.600 | like to explain here.

02:44:24.920 | I'll try to be brief.

02:44:27.000 | I can recommend a lot of books on this topic of language and communication that reveal

02:44:30.760 | just how amazing this technology of language is.

02:44:33.760 | For example, for a good overview, I recommend John McWhorter's books and especially his

02:44:39.160 | lecture series for the great courses on language, there are several.

02:44:43.440 | In the "Story of Human Language" series, he gives a great discussion on spoken language

02:44:50.160 | versus written language, and that spoken language often relaxes the rules of communication.

02:44:55.320 | It uses shorter packets of words, loads in a bunch of subtle cues and meanings, all of

02:45:01.920 | which, like I'm trying to describe, are lost when there's an interpreter in the loop.

02:45:08.720 | Let me also describe some relevant characteristics of my "peculiar language abilities".

02:45:16.800 | I was never good at speaking.

02:45:18.680 | I listen, think, and understand better than I speak.

02:45:22.000 | For me, this is true for both English and Russian, but it is especially true for Russian.

02:45:28.760 | The Russian language allows for much more room for wit, non-standard terms of phrase,

02:45:34.680 | metaphors, humor, rhyme, musicality, and, let's say, deforming of words that create

02:45:41.480 | a lot of room for creativity in how meaning and emotion are conveyed.

02:45:45.720 | You could do the same in English, but it's harder.

02:45:48.160 | I actually find that Brits are sometimes very good at this.

02:45:53.520 | One of my favorite humans to talk to is Douglas Murray, setting the content of the conversation

02:45:58.600 | aside, the sheer linguistic brilliance and wit of dialogue with Douglas is a journey

02:46:04.880 | in itself.

02:46:06.720 | I think Christopher Hitchens had the same, and many others, like I said, especially Brits.

02:46:13.360 | Anyway, I'm able to detect and understand a lot of dynamism and humor in the Russian

02:46:20.200 | language, but I'm slow to generate it, in part because I just don't practice.

02:46:25.240 | I have very few Russian-speaking friends.

02:46:28.400 | Funny enough, most of them are Ukrainian, but they speak with me and each other in Russian.

02:46:34.960 | But of course, as I mentioned, this is slowly changing due to the war.

02:46:40.040 | But I try to speak to the President in Russian so he would avoid needing an interpreter as

02:46:45.080 | much as possible.

02:46:47.280 | One of the things I want to improve for next time is to make sure I get very good equipment

02:46:52.400 | for interpretation and arrange for an interpreter I trust to be exceptionally good for the dynamism,

02:46:58.360 | and the endurance of a three-hour conversation in the style that I try to do.

02:47:05.480 | Just to give you some behind-the-scenes details of the experience, so equipment-wise, funny

02:47:10.480 | enough, it's not actually so trivial to set up wireless connections from us, the two people

02:47:16.760 | talking, to the interpreter, and then back to us in a way that's super robust and has

02:47:22.280 | clean audio.

02:47:24.160 | The audio I had in my ear from the interpreter had a lot of background noise, so the whole

02:47:29.160 | time I'm hearing a "shhh" sound with the voice of the interpreter coming in very quietly.

02:47:38.560 | What a wonderful experience this whole life is, frankly.

02:47:43.320 | Plus, his translation was often incomplete, at least for me, so I had to put together

02:47:48.560 | those puzzle pieces continuously, but again, it worked out, and hopefully our constant

02:47:54.960 | switching of languages and having a meta-discussion about language provided good insights as to

02:48:00.800 | the complexity of this fight for a nation's identity and sovereignty that Ukraine is going

02:48:06.000 | through.

02:48:07.480 | Behind-the-scenes, off-mic, on a personal level, President Zelensky was funny, thoughtful,

02:48:15.240 | and just a kind-hearted person, and really, the whole team were just great people.

02:48:20.840 | It was an experience I'll never forget.

02:48:24.560 | After the conversation was recorded, the next challenge was to translate all of this and

02:48:28.560 | overdub it and do it super quickly, like these words I'm speaking now have to be translated

02:48:35.680 | and dubbed into Ukrainian and Russian.

02:48:39.080 | 11Labs were really helpful here, especially in bringing the President's voice to life

02:48:45.320 | in different languages, but even more than that, they're just an amazing team who inspired

02:48:51.680 | me and everyone involved.

02:48:54.080 | Please go support 11Labs.

02:48:56.320 | They are a great company and great people.

02:49:00.240 | The translation is separate from the text-to-speech and was done in part by AI and a lot by human.

02:49:08.300 | This is where the fact that we had constant switching between three languages was a real

02:49:12.560 | challenge.

02:49:13.560 | So there are six transition mappings that have to be done.

02:49:18.400 | English to Ukrainian and Russian, Ukrainian to English and Russian, and then Russian to

02:49:23.000 | English and Ukrainian, continuously, sentence-by-sentence, sometimes word-by-word, and each combination

02:49:32.240 | of language-to-language translation is best done by a person who specializes in that kind

02:49:36.980 | of mapping.

02:49:38.280 | So it was all a beautiful mess, all of it.

02:49:41.440 | And on top of all that, great translation is super hard.

02:49:44.760 | For example, I've read and listened to a lot of the CF scheme, both English and Russian,

02:49:49.840 | and studied the process of how these books are translated by various translators.

02:49:54.620 | You can spend a week discussing how to translate a single important sentence well.

02:50:00.240 | Obviously, in this situation, we don't have weeks, we have hours for the whole thing.

02:50:06.560 | One of the things I regret is not putting enough time into the hiring and selecting

02:50:10.340 | great translators, from Russian and Ukrainian to English, especially.

02:50:15.800 | I think translation is an art.

02:50:17.920 | So getting a good translator that works well with us is a process that needs more time

02:50:23.560 | and effort.

02:50:24.560 | I'll be doing that more this month.

02:50:27.400 | By the way, we have a small but amazing team.

02:50:32.180 | If you want to join us, go to LexFriedman.com/hiring.

02:50:35.460 | If you're passionate, work hard, and everyone on the team loves working with you, then we'll

02:50:40.000 | do some epic stuff together.

02:50:41.520 | We'd love to work with you.

02:50:43.640 | Like I said about Eleven Labs, there are few things as awesome in life as being able to

02:50:48.560 | work hard with an amazing team towards a mission all of us are passionate about.

02:50:53.880 | Anyway, I'll probably be doing a few more interviews in the Russian language.

02:50:58.480 | I do have a lingering goal of interviewing the mathematician Grigory Perlman, but there

02:51:04.000 | are also others.

02:51:05.960 | I will also work on improving my whole pipeline, both equipment-wise and interpreter-wise,

02:51:11.460 | in doing these conversations in other languages.

02:51:15.000 | Because there are many that I would like to do in languages I don't speak at all, like

02:51:19.040 | Chinese, Mandarin, or Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, French, German.

02:51:24.700 | I see language as both a barrier for communication and a portal into understanding the spirit

02:51:30.880 | of a people connected by that language.

02:51:34.240 | It's all a weird and beautiful puzzle, and I'm just excited to get the chance to explore

02:51:38.320 | it.

02:51:39.320 | Alright, I got a question on how I prepare for podcasts.

02:51:44.440 | So this has evolved and expanded more and more over time.

02:51:49.000 | There are some podcasts that I prepare hundreds of hours for.

02:51:52.840 | In AI terms, let's say, first I'm training a solid background model by consuming as much

02:51:58.560 | variety on the topic as possible.

02:52:01.040 | A lot of this comes down to picking high-signal sources, whether it's blogs, books, podcasts,

02:52:06.800 | YouTube videos, ex-accounts, and so on.

02:52:09.980 | For this conversation with President Zelensky, for example, since February 2022, I've spoken

02:52:16.480 | with hundreds of people on the ground, I've read Kindle or audiobook about 10 books fully,

02:52:22.920 | and then I skimmed about 20 more.

02:52:28.520 | And I don't mean books about Zelensky, although he does appear in some of them, I mean books

02:52:32.960 | where this conversation was fully in the back of my mind as I'm reading the book.

02:52:38.740 | So for example, I read "Red Famine" by Anna Applebaum.

02:52:43.920 | It's about Holodomor.

02:52:46.600 | Does it directly relate to Zelensky?

02:52:48.760 | Not on the surface, no.

02:52:49.960 | But it sort of continues to weave the fabric of my understanding of a people, of the history

02:52:55.240 | of the region.

02:52:57.080 | But it's really important for me to read books from various perspectives, and I'm always

02:53:02.680 | trying to calculate the bias under which the author operates, and adjusting for that in

02:53:08.880 | my brain as I integrate the information.

02:53:12.560 | For example, Anna Applebaum's book "Gulag" is very different from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's

02:53:18.200 | "Gulag Archipelago."

02:53:20.560 | The former is a rigorous, comprehensive historical account, the latter is a literary, psychological,

02:53:28.120 | and personal portrait of Soviet society.

02:53:31.200 | Both, I think, are extremely valuable.

02:53:34.780 | On the bias front, for example, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shire

02:53:39.360 | is a good example.

02:53:40.640 | It is full of bias.

02:53:42.320 | But he was there, and to me, he has written probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest

02:53:48.280 | book on the Third Reich ever.

02:53:50.360 | But like I said, it has a lot of inaccuracies and biases, you can read about them online

02:53:54.880 | if you like.

02:53:55.880 | But my job in this case, and in all cases, is to adjust based on my understanding of

02:54:01.280 | the author's biases, and take the wisdom from the text where it could be found, and putting

02:54:06.360 | the inaccuracies aside into the proverbial dustbins of history.

02:54:12.040 | So as I'm reading, I'm writing down my thoughts as they come up, always digging for some deeper

02:54:17.000 | insight about human nature.

02:54:19.320 | If I'm at my computer, I'll write it down in Google Doc, sometimes use Notion or Obsidian.

02:54:27.040 | If I'm not at my computer, I'll use Google Keep.

02:54:29.440 | So for example, if I'm listening to an audiobook and I'm running along the river, if a good

02:54:34.080 | idea comes to mind, I'll stop, think for a few seconds, and then do speech-to-text note

02:54:40.720 | in Google Keep.

02:54:42.100 | By the way, listening to audiobook at 1x speed.

02:54:47.900 | Old school.

02:54:49.420 | And eventually I get a gigantic pile of thoughts and notes that I look over to refresh my memory.

02:54:54.900 | But for the most part, I just throw them out.

02:54:58.380 | It's a background model building process.

02:55:01.100 | By the way, LLMs are increasingly becoming useful here for organization purposes, but

02:55:05.780 | have not yet been useful, at least for me, and I do try a lot for insight extraction

02:55:11.700 | or insight generation purposes.

02:55:14.740 | I should mention that my memory for specific facts, names, dates, quotes, is terrible.

02:55:21.620 | What I remember well is high-level ideas.

02:55:24.260 | That's just how my brain works, for better or for worse.

02:55:27.140 | I realize that sometimes forgetting all of the details and the words needed to express

02:55:34.000 | them makes me sound simplistic and even unprepared.

02:55:38.500 | I'm not.

02:55:40.620 | But that's life.

02:55:41.620 | We have to accept our flaws and roll with them.

02:55:45.020 | Aside from books, I also listen to a lot of podcasts and YouTube videos where people are

02:55:49.340 | talking about the topic.

02:55:51.020 | So for the President Zelensky episode, I listened probably to hundreds of hours of content from

02:55:56.260 | his supporters and from his critics, from all sides.

02:55:59.660 | Again, I choose who to listen to based not on their perspective, but based on SNR, signal

02:56:05.980 | to noise ratio.

02:56:07.540 | If I'm regularly getting insights from a person, I will continue listening to them,

02:56:12.300 | whether I agree or disagree.

02:56:13.740 | In the end, this turns out to be a lot of hours of prep, but to say that it's X hours

02:56:18.420 | per episode is not accurate because a lot of this preparation transfers from one guest

02:56:22.780 | to another, even when there's an insane level of variety in the guests.

02:56:27.140 | We're all humans, after all.

02:56:29.300 | There is a thread that connects all of it together, somehow, if you look closely enough.

02:56:35.500 | For more technical guests in STEM fields, I'll read papers, a lot of papers, and also

02:56:41.940 | technical blog posts and technical tweet threads.

02:56:44.940 | This is a very different process.

02:56:47.020 | For AI or CS-related topics, I will run other people's code, I will write my own, implement

02:56:52.220 | stuff from scratch.

02:56:53.720 | If it's a software company, I'll use their tools and software if relevant.

02:56:57.560 | But in the actual conversation, I constantly am searching for simple but profound insights

02:57:03.340 | at various levels of abstraction.

02:57:06.760 | Sometimes this means asking a trivial question in hopes of uncovering the non-trivial, counterintuitive

02:57:12.140 | but fundamental idea that opens the door to a whole new way of looking at the field.

02:57:18.180 | And actually, every guest is their own puzzle, like preparing for Rick Rubin was me listening

02:57:24.540 | to hundreds of songs he produced and even learning some on guitar, like "Hurt" by

02:57:29.740 | Danny Cash.

02:57:30.740 | Preparing for the Cursor team episode meant, obviously, I had to use Cursor fully for several

02:57:38.300 | weeks, all of its features, so I switched completely from VS Code to Cursor.

02:57:43.500 | For Paul Rosely, round two especially, I literally went deep into the jungle with Paul and almost

02:57:51.820 | died, fully taking the leap toward adventure with him.

02:57:57.080 | When it gets close to the conversation, I'll start working on the actual interview questions

02:58:00.920 | and notes, and there I'm asking myself, "What am I personally curious about?"

02:58:07.960 | Like I love podcasts, I'm a big fan of many, many podcasts, and so I ask myself, "What

02:58:13.800 | would I want this person to explain on a podcast?"

02:58:17.020 | And maybe, "What aspect of their thought process or their humanity would I want to

02:58:21.900 | be surfaced or have the chance to be surfaced?"

02:58:26.280 | In the actual conversation, I always try to put my ego aside completely and do whatever

02:58:31.300 | it takes to have a good conversation and serve the listener.

02:58:35.540 | This means asking questions simply, trying to define terms and give context if needed,

02:58:41.620 | being open-minded, vulnerable, curious, and challenging the guest when needed.

02:58:47.420 | Despite the claims on the internet, I do ask a lot of challenging questions, including

02:58:52.380 | follow-ups, but always with empathy.

02:58:55.580 | I don't need to be right.

02:58:57.220 | I don't need to signal my moral or intellectual superiority to anyone.

02:59:02.100 | I try to do the opposite actually, because I want the guest to open up, and I trust the

02:59:06.940 | intelligence of the listener to see for themselves if the guest is full of shit or not, to detect

02:59:12.660 | the flaws and the strengths of how the guest thinks or who they are deep down.

02:59:18.900 | A lot of times when interviewers grill the guest, it doesn't reveal much except give

02:59:23.720 | a dopamine hit to the echo chambers who hate the guest.

02:59:29.140 | As I said in the intro, I believe the line between good and evil does run through the

02:59:33.280 | heart of every man.

02:59:35.860 | The resulting conversations are sometimes a failure.

02:59:39.140 | Sometimes because they're too short, sometimes because the chemistry was just not working,

02:59:43.580 | sometimes because I fucked it up.

02:59:46.980 | I try to take risks, give it everything I got, and enjoy the roller coaster of it all,

02:59:52.180 | no matter what.

02:59:54.280 | And as I said, I trust the listener to put it all together, and I trust the critic to

02:59:59.540 | tear it apart, and I love you all for it.

03:00:03.420 | All right, I got a bit of a fun question.

03:00:07.660 | It's a long one.

03:00:09.420 | So Deleon, cool name, wrote in saying he spotted me out in the wild and had a question about

03:00:14.980 | it.

03:00:16.100 | He wrote, "I saw Lex working at the Detroit airport between flights.

03:00:20.860 | I hesitated and ultimately decided not to interrupt since he was in focus mode."

03:00:25.900 | True.

03:00:26.900 | "Lex had his headphones/earbuds on, listening to brown noise.

03:00:31.300 | Microsoft Surface propped up at eye level, Kinesis Advantage keyboard on the table.

03:00:35.420 | The use of Microsoft Windows is surprising, but it has been discussed in the past."

03:00:40.180 | True.

03:00:41.180 | "The ergonomics of the setup, Surface at eye level, means that Lex cares about his health.

03:00:47.500 | But the anomalously large Kinesis Advantage keyboard seems like such a burden to lug around

03:00:52.620 | airports I cannot help but ask, 'Why is it that Lex is going through the hassle to bring

03:00:57.940 | this absolutely large keyboard with him as carry-on?

03:01:01.380 | It barely fits in a backpack.

03:01:04.660 | Carrying it around must be necessary for Lex for some reason."

03:01:07.260 | I love the puzzle of this that you're trying to think through this.

03:01:10.220 | "The pain of lugging this tool around must be much smaller than the problem it solves

03:01:14.500 | for him?

03:01:16.140 | What problem does this keyboard solve?

03:01:18.880 | What makes it necessary at the airport?

03:01:21.260 | Productivity?

03:01:22.260 | Health?

03:01:23.260 | RSI?"

03:01:24.260 | Good questions.

03:01:25.900 | Thank you, Deleon.

03:01:27.540 | Good question.

03:01:28.540 | It made me smile, so I thought I'd answer.

03:01:30.700 | I remember that day.

03:01:32.500 | There was something else about that day, aside from the keyboard, that I miss.

03:01:37.980 | So I am filled with a melancholy feeling that is appropriate for the holiday season.

03:01:44.900 | So let me try to set the melancholy feeling aside, answer a question about my computer

03:01:50.100 | setup when I'm traveling.

03:01:52.180 | So whether I'm going to SF, Boston, Austin, London, or the front in Ukraine, I am always

03:02:00.240 | bringing the Kinesis keyboard.

03:02:03.300 | I don't have RSI or any other health issues of that kind that I'm aware of.

03:02:08.980 | Even though I've been programming, playing guitar, doing all kinds of combat sports my

03:02:15.460 | whole life, all of which put my hands and fingers in a lot of precarious positions and

03:02:22.140 | situations.

03:02:23.140 | For that reason, and in general, ergonomics have never been a big concern for me.

03:02:27.740 | I can work on a crappy chair and table, sleep on the floor.

03:02:33.140 | It's all great.

03:02:34.480 | I'm happy with all of it.

03:02:36.620 | So why Kinesis?

03:02:37.620 | Which, by the way, is right here.

03:02:39.380 | I had to think about it.

03:02:46.860 | Your question actually made me reflect, and I was hoping as I'm answering it, the truth

03:02:51.180 | will come out on many levels.

03:02:54.400 | So it is true that I'm more productive with it.

03:02:56.460 | I can type and correct mistakes very fast compared to a regular keyboard, both in natural

03:03:02.380 | language typing and in programming.

03:03:05.280 | So fast enough, I think, where it feels like I can think freely without the physical bottlenecks

03:03:14.160 | and constraints of fingers moving.

03:03:18.580 | The bitrate in Neuralink parlance is high enough for me to not feel like there is cognitive

03:03:24.680 | friction of any kind.

03:03:26.480 | But the real answer, maybe the deeper, more honest answer, is something else.

03:03:29.940 | I've used the Kinesis keyboard for over 20 years.

03:03:34.100 | So maybe it's like one of those love stories where a guy and a girl love each other, and

03:03:41.580 | you try to quit because it doesn't quite work, but every time you leave, you ask yourself

03:03:45.340 | why.

03:03:46.340 | And then you realize that when you're together, your life is just full of simple joys.

03:03:53.340 | So what's the point of leaving?

03:03:56.020 | What's the point of life if not to keep close to you the things that bring you joy, Deleon,

03:04:01.020 | like this keyboard?

03:04:02.700 | What brings me joy?

03:04:04.620 | It's a bad metaphor, over-anthropomorphized, perhaps, but I never promised a good one.

03:04:11.740 | I'm like a cheap motel on a road trip.

03:04:14.020 | Low quality is part of the charm.

03:04:16.940 | I do have some good motel stories for another time.

03:04:19.440 | This does not feel like the appropriate time.

03:04:22.500 | All that said, to disagree with myself, I did use Emacs also for over 20 years, and

03:04:28.580 | in a single week recently switched to VS Code and then Cursor and never looked back.

03:04:34.220 | So take my romantic nature with a grain of salt.

03:04:38.740 | So yes, eventually I'll have to leave, but for now, you'll keep finding me on occasion

03:04:43.640 | in a random airport somewhere listening to brown noise, writing away the hours on this

03:04:48.340 | Kinesis keyboard.

03:04:50.060 | Now if you see me without it, maybe it'll give you the same tinge of melancholy feeling

03:04:56.940 | I feel now in looking back to that airport in Detroit.

03:05:02.100 | Anyway, more about my travel setup, if anyone is curious.

03:05:07.340 | I usually do travel with a Windows laptop, but I am mostly using Linux on it through

03:05:12.460 | WSL, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and in some cases I'm dual booting Linux and Windows.

03:05:19.700 | I also need to be able to video edit, so on longer trips I usually have a bigger laptop

03:05:25.340 | with a bigger screen, lots of memory, good CPU, good GPU, all of that helps with video

03:05:30.820 | editing on Adobe Premiere.

03:05:32.980 | In general, I'm extremely minimalist, except for the few, let's call them sentimental things,

03:05:40.580 | like all my podcast recording equipment fits into a small suitcase.

03:05:44.580 | I try to keep it as simple as possible.

03:05:47.060 | Thank you for the question, and see you at the next airport.

03:05:50.980 | Alright, I think it's time to bring things to a close.

03:05:55.100 | I'd like to give a big thanks to you for giving me your time and your support over the years.

03:06:01.500 | It means the world.

03:06:03.260 | If you want to get in touch with me, go to lexfriedman.com/contact.

03:06:07.340 | There you can get feedback, ask questions, request guests for the podcast, or submit

03:06:13.860 | the Coffee with Lex forum if you just want to chat with me over a cup of coffee.

03:06:19.220 | I'll be traveling across the world a bunch this year, from Europe to South America and

03:06:22.940 | more, so it would be cool to do some small meetups and meet some interesting people.

03:06:28.180 | This has been a journey of a lifetime.

03:06:31.380 | Thank you for everything.

03:06:34.420 | On to the next adventure.

03:06:36.100 | I love you all.

03:06:36.820 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Ukraine, War, Peace, Putin, Trump, NATO, and Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #456

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