Q: Joe Biden asked you if you wanted to be evacuated?

Zelensky: He was the first.

Q: What did he say?

Zelensky: "We are ready to help you evacuate. Kyiv is surrounded, and we are ready to help you and your family." Likewise, many Europeans offered me that later.

Q: What did you say to Biden?

Zelensky: I need ammunition, not a ride.

Zelensky:

They cut off our food, cut off our water, cut everything off completely.

They expected people to run, and me.

Certain people came to me and said "Kyiv is cut off, Kyiv is surrounded, and the Russians are suggesting you hand over your powers."

"Kyiv must surrender."

Naturally, I told those people where to go — let's put it that way — out of my office.

Zelensky:

Nobody expected that they would go through Belarus and advance on the capital.

That's why we didn't have any strong troops there. That is an absolute fact.

We simply didn't have that kind of army.

Just imagine 200,000 people coming at you. It's simply impossible to defend.

You need an army like the one we have today, 800,000.

We held out and destroyed them. They didn't have enough troops to hold the occupied territories, and they had to pull back.

That's how we fully took back Kyiv region, Chernihiv region and that whole front.

Zelensky:

When our guys hit their tanks, we found parade uniforms. It's true.

They found parade uniforms in Russian military vehicles. They were literally marching to a parade.

They wanted to capture Kyiv in three days and symbolically hold some kind of spectacle of pseudo-victory on Independence Square.

Zelensky:

When the full-scale invasion started, there was mobilization.

People showed up as volunteers, and our army grew from 200,000 to 800,000.

The Russian presence was around 700,000 across all directions on Ukrainian territory.

This was a massive onslaught.

Zelensky:

What's the problem for Russia?

If Ukraine becomes part of Europe, then Russia will collapse.

It will fall apart. There are many different peoples, different religions, entirely different nations.

Zelensky:

They called Ukraine the Soviet Union's forge of talent.

There were so many scientists, engineers, universities, a huge intelligentsia.

Many people who came from Ukraine went on to run various institutions and ministries in the Soviet Union.

Ukraine was the intellectual part of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine was always involved in rocket manufacturing. The biggest rocket manufacturing was here, nuclear weapons, which Ukraine handed over. A lot of things were made in Ukraine.

Zelensky:

Putin started the war in Chechnya.

He destroyed it completely.

The very same military commanders who fought in Chechnya, who destroyed Chechnya completely, are involved in what's happening in eastern Ukraine.

There was nothing left. No buildings, nothing.

A huge number of people were killed in Chechnya.

Zelensky:

Ukraine is the heir to Kyivan Rus, a great state that was very well known in Europe.

Russia wasn't even close to existing. Russia came after Ukraine already existed.

But Putin cuts all that out and starts with the 1917 Revolution.

Zelensky:

Why do empires fall apart? Because people want to be free.

People live like fish in a fish tank.

The fish tank can be massive, like the Soviet Union, but it's still a fish tank.

North Korea is a smaller fish tank, but it's a fish tank.

Zelensky:

I don't know what President Trump is talking about.

They surrounded Kyiv. They reached Kyiv. They occupied towns on the way to Kyiv.

It wasn't a matter of some general being an idiot.

They needed around 300,000 to 400,000 troops to take Kyiv. They needed twice as many men.

They didn't even realize there would be resistance. That was their main mistake.

Zelensky:

The war really started with the occupation of Crimea.

It's just that it was slow, that occupation. It didn't look much like a war because Ukraine wasn't fighting back at that point.

The problem was that there were no clear orders from the Ukrainian authorities that you need to defend your land.

If there had been an order to defend the country, I'm sure a full-scale war in the form it has today wouldn't have happened.

Our mistake was not pushing them back.

Zelensky:

My grandfather went through World War II from start to finish.

He came from a family where there were several brothers, and all of them were killed by the Nazis.

I have very few relatives on both sides of my family. Many relatives were killed by the fascists.

That's why it always sounded so bizarre when Russia accused Ukraine of supposedly having Nazis.

It's bizarre and completely wild.

Zelensky:

Where Trump is right is that if Crimea hadn't been allowed to fall, there would be no war. I agree with President Trump.

Dozens of people went into Crimea. Dozens. For a country like this, that's zero. That's nothing. We handled hundreds of thousands.

If they'd been hit back then, there wouldn't have been a chance of a full-scale war.

Putin would have known there would be a blow, there would be a response.

Zelensky:

I don't think Putin will risk nuclear weapons.

I don't think they'll take the risk of using nuclear weapons.

I'm sure they won't have any allies left, including countries like America and China.

That's far too dangerous, even for nuclear powers.

Zelensky:

Trump decided to pin this problem not on Putin, but on me, explaining to his people that diesel prices in America are going up because of us.

That is completely untrue.

Zelensky:

I think it's wrong and unacceptable that Trump pins Russia's aggression and Russia's killings on me.

He is shifting the context, and that's not fair.

I think this is just deflecting the focus away from Iran, from what's happening in the Middle East.

The Strait of Hormuz is blocked. That's the root of the problem.

But everything gets shifted onto us, and I'm made the target as the leader of our country.

Zelensky:

When President Trump says we need to find a compromise, believe me, a ceasefire and sitting down at the negotiating table is a huge compromise.

That hatred isn't going anywhere. It takes time and justice.

I've tried many times to tell the president of the United States: Just understand us. This is a huge compromise just to hold the lines where we are.

Zelensky:

You have to be president, and you have to calm down and be more diplomatic.

But you can't just forgive everything and say, "Well, sorry, that's Putin, a powerful country. Let's just forget everything, forgive everything, and somehow we'll buy and sell gas or diesel or whatever."

That's difficult.

Zelensky:

I know so many people had their hearts ripped out, and there won't be a new heart.

You have to give them at least something. Some trial, some justice, at least some moral solace.

You can't just leave it because that hole inside them won't heal, and there will be revenge.

The guilty must be punished. At the very least, you have to show a path that it will happen.

It's totally impossible to simply forgive.

Zelensky:

I said, "Okay, you can't force Putin to stop the war and make an energy truce. Give me air defense missiles."

I won't fire at anyone. I'll protect our energy sector.

So where am I being unfair? In what way?

I asked Trump, "Give us missiles."

Not for free. Again, not even for free. Europeans are funding all of it.

There's an agreement, but they won't give them to us.

They say they can't. They have given everything to the Middle East.