Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is downplaying past disagreements with former President Donald Trump following a meeting in New York City.
Zelenskyy visited Trump Tower on Friday to meet with the Republican presidential nominee, then sat down with Fox News’ Griff Jenkins to discuss what seems to have been a good-spirited conversation.
“We understand that even in any kind of future negotiations, Ukraine has to be strong. That’s what it’s about,” Zelenskyy told Jenkins when asked why he met with Trump. “We spoke with Biden, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and the Congress of the United States.”
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Jenkins pressed Zelenskyy about his comments that appeared in a New Yorker article earlier this week — in which he was quoted saying that he believes Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how” — and whether Trump had said anything to change Zelenskyy’s mind.
“No, I said that I think that we understand much more better than everybody, really, including Donald Trump, what’s going on in Ukraine and how to stop him. It’s difficult to understand,” Zelenskyy responded.
The Ukrainian president said his country is now a completely different nation from the one that was first invaded in 2022.
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“Ukraine, during the war in Ukraine before the full-scale invasion — two different countries. So without this experience, you can’t really understand how to stop [Russian President Vladimir Putin],” Zelenskyy continued. “And that’s what I wanted to share to president . . . and the price of this tragedy of bloody invasion of Putin.”
At one point during their meeting, Trump told the press that he had a “good relationship” with both Zelenskyy and Putin. Zelenskyy then interjected to say he hopes the U.S. has a better relationship with Ukraine than Russia.
Jenkins asked the Ukrainian president whether Trump’s comment about maintaining a good relationship with Putin concerned him.
Zelenskyy said he was not necessarily concerned, acknowledging that “Trump has relations and had relations when he was the president, during his term” and maintains “relations with a lot of countries and a lot of UN leaders.”
During the exclusive interview, Zelenskyy lamented the lack of response Putin received from the rest of the world when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2014 with the taking of Crimea.
“Nobody kicked him, and that meant he understood that he can occupy it and go further. He can occupy new territories of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said. “He began to prepare to do this — his plan — and he did it.”
