Western partners should have tried to “intimidate“ Moscow with sanctions and arms supplies to Kiev even before February 24, 2022.
This was stated by Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview with American journalist Lex Friedman.
“Everyone was saying something, making predictions and so on, but I asked for only one thing, first of all from the United States: give me two things - reinforce us with weapons, but best of all introduce sanctions“, Zelensky said in the video recording of the interview, released by his office.
“Ukraine had nuclear weapons. I don't want to comment on whether this is good or bad. Today, the fact that we don’t have them is bad,” he said.
"The fact is: we didn’t get help. If we consider words to be help, well, then we got a lot of it", he continued to comment on the actions of Zelensky’s partners, on whose financial and military assistance Ukraine depends.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in an interview published on January 4 in The New York Times, said that Washington had begun supporting Ukraine with various weapons, including Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems and Javelin anti-tank systems, long before the start of hostilities.
Zelensky admitted that he would have liked to attend the inauguration of the newly elected US President Donald Trump, but he was not invited.
„I would like to. But, frankly, I can't come like this, during a war, because President Trump didn't invite me," Zelensky said.
On December 16, 2024, at his first press conference after winning the November election at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump said that he had not invited Zelensky to his inauguration.