Lex Fridman Podcast
#456 – Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Ukraine, War, Peace, Putin, Trump, NATO, and Freedom
Mon, 06 Jan 2025
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the President of Ukraine. On YouTube this episode is available in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. Captions and voice-over audio tracks are provided in English, Ukrainian, Russian, and the original mixed-language version, with subtitles available in your preferred language. To listen to the original mixed language version, please select the English (UK) audio track audio track. The default is English overdub. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep456-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/volodymyr-zelenskyy-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: President Zelenskyy's X: https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa President Zelenskyy's Instagram: https://instagram.com/zelenskyy_official President Zelenskyy's Website: https://www.president.gov.ua/ SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Notion: Note-taking and team collaboration. Go to https://notion.com/lex GitHub: Developer platform and AI code editor. Go to https://gh.io/copilot AG1: All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to https://drinkag1.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex Eight Sleep: Temp-controlled smart mattress cover. Go to https://eightsleep.com/lex BetterHelp: Online therapy and counseling. Go to https://betterhelp.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (20:17) - Language (30:06) - World War II (46:54) - Invasion on Feb 24, 2022 (53:30) - Negotiating Peace (1:13:47) - NATO and security guarantees (1:26:39) - Sitting down with Putin and Trump (1:46:09) - Compromise and leverage (1:51:38) - Putin and Russia (2:01:30) - Donald Trump (2:12:01) - Martial Law and Elections (2:24:21) - Corruption (2:33:06) - Elon Musk (2:37:10) - Trump Inauguration on Jan 20 (2:40:18) - Power dynamics in Ukraine (2:43:50) - Future of Ukraine (2:48:32) - Choice of language (2:58:02) - Podcast prep and research process (3:06:27) - Travel and setup (3:12:13) - Conclusion PODCAST LINKS: - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips SOCIAL LINKS: - X: https://x.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://instagram.com/lexfridman - TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://facebook.com/lexfridman - Patreon: https://patreon.com/lexfridman - Telegram: https://t.me/lexfridman - Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman
The following is a conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. It was an intense, raw, and heartfelt conversation, my goal for which was to understand and to do all I can to push for peace. Please allow me to say a few words, first about language, then about the president, and finally about history. Please skip ahead straight to our conversation if you like.
We spoke in a mix of languages, continuously switching from Ukrainian to Russian to English, so the interpreter was barely hanging on. It was indeed, in many ways, a wild ride of a conversation. As the president said, the first of many. Language, like many other things in a time of war, is a big deal. We had a choice. Speak in Russian, Ukrainian, or English.
The president does speak some English, but he's far from fluent in it. And I, sadly, don't speak Ukrainian. Yet. So Russian is the only common language we're both fluent in. In case you don't know, the Russian language is one that the president speaks fluently and was his primary language for most of his life.
It's the language I also speak fluently, to the degree I speak any language fluently, as does a large fraction of the Ukrainian population.
So the most dynamic and powerful conversation between us would be in Russian, without an interpreter, who in this case added about two to three second delay, and frankly, translated partially and poorly, for me at least, taking away my ability to feel the humor, the wit, the brilliance, the pain, the anger, the humanity,
of the person sitting before me that I could clearly feel when he was speaking fluently in the language I understand, Russian. But all that said, war changes everything. The Ukrainian language has become a symbol of the Ukrainian people's fight for freedom and independence. So we had a difficult choice of three languages.
And faced with that choice, we said yes to all three, to the consternation and dismay of the translators. We make captions and voiceover audio tracks available in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. So you can listen either to a version that is all one language or to the original mixed language version with subtitles in your preferred language. The default is English overdub.
On YouTube, you can switch between language audio tracks by clicking the settings gear icon, then clicking audio track, and then selecting the language you prefer. English, Ukrainian, Russian. To listen to the original mixed language version, please select the English UK audio track. Big thank you to Eleven Labs for their help with overdubbing using a mix of AI and humans.
We will continue to explore how to break down the barriers that language creates with AI and otherwise. This is a difficult but important endeavor. Language, after all, is much more than a cold sequence of facts and logic statements. There are words, when spoken in the right sequence and at the right time, that can shake the world. and turn the ties of history that can start and end wars.
Great leaders can find those words, and great translators can help these words reverberate to the outskirts of a divided civilization. On another note, let me say that President Zelensky is a truly remarkable person and a historic figure. I say this as somebody who deeply understands the geopolitical complexity and history of the region. I am from this region.
My parents were both born in Ukraine, Kyiv and Kharkiv, both my grandfathers too. I was born in Tajikistan and lived for a time there, then in Kyiv, then Moscow, then United States. And while I am now for almost 30 years and to the day I die, I am a proud American. My family roots grow deep in the soil of nations that comprised the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Tajikistan.
I've gotten to know and have spoken for hours with members of the president's team and people close to him. I spoke to hundreds of Ukrainians since 2022, including soldiers, civilians, politicians, artists, religious leaders, journalists, economists, historians, and technologists.
I've listened to hundreds of hours of programs that both support and criticize the president in Ukraine, in Russia, in the United States. I've read countless books about this war and the long arc of history that led up to it.
If forced to recommend two at this moment, I would say The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plohi and The Showman by Simon Schuster, which is a good personal behind-the-scenes biography of the president focused on 2022. But there are many, many more. This is why I can comfortably say that he is a truly singular and remarkable human being.
It was an honor and pleasure to talk with him on and off the mic. Now, it is true that I plan to travel to Moscow and to speak with President Vladimir Putin. And I hope to be back in Kiev as well. As President Zelensky said, this was our first of many more meetings. In all these cases, I seek to do my small part in pushing for peace.
And in doing all this, I'm deeply grateful for the trust people have given me on all sides. for the people attacking me, sometimes lying about me, for the critics in the stands, chanting the latest slogans of the mass hysteria machine like the sheep and animal farm. I love you too.
And I assure you that drawing lines between good and evil on a world map is much easier than seeing that line between good and evil in every human being, including you and me. This is what I try to do. I'm simply a human being who seeks to find and surface the humanity in others. And as I've said, no amount of money, fame, power, access can buy my opinion or my integrity.
Now, finally, please allow me to briefly overview some history to give background for several topics that President Zelensky references in this conversation. I recommend my conversation with Serhii Plohi and many others about the history of the region. But here, let me start with 1991, when Ukraine declared its independence and the Soviet Union collapsed.
From this point on, Russia-Ukraine relations were defined in large part by whether Ukraine aligned more with Russia or with the West, meaning Europe, United States, NATO, and so on. In 2004, with the Orange Revolution, a pro-Western candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, became president. In 2010, it went the other way. A pro-Russia candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, became president.
The internal tensions grew, and in 2013, the Euromaidan protests broke out over Yanukovych's decision to suspend talks with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. This set forward a chain of important events in 2014. On the politics front, Yanukovych was ousted and fled to Russia, leading to the election of a pro-Western president.
Also, in 2014, on the war front, Russia annexed Crimea and war broke out in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, which eventually killed over 14,000 people. and continued all the way to 2022, when on February 24th, 2022, Russian forces initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This is when the world started to really pay attention. Now, some history of peace talks.
Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidency in 2019, and he discusses in this conversation the ceasefire agreements he made with Vladimir Putin in 2019. which was one of many attempts at peace, from the two Minsk agreements in 2014 and 15 to a series of ceasefire agreements in 2018, 19, and 20, all of which failed, in part or in whole.
All this shows just how difficult ceasefire and peace negotiations are, but they are not impossible. It is always worth trying over and over again to find the path to peace. I believe that Presidents Zelensky, Putin, and Trump should meet soon after January 20th this year and give everything they got to negotiate a ceasefire and security guarantees that pave the way for long-lasting peace.
We discussed several ideas for this in this conversation. As I said, this was one of my main goals here, to push for peace. This trip to Kyiv and this conversation was a truly special moment for me in my life. It is one I will never forget. So to reflect, I say a few more words and answer some questions at the very end if you like to listen.
But here, let me say thank you to everyone for your support over the years. It means the world. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. There are no sponsor reads in the middle, so, you know, you can skip these. But I do try to make them interesting. in case you stick around.
In either case, still please check out the sponsors, buy their stuff. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Notion for notes and team collaboration, GitHub for all things programming, including with the help of AI, AG1 for health, Element for electrolytes, 8sleep for naps, and BetterHelp for your mind.
If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfriedman.com slash contact. And now onto the full ad reads. This episode is brought to you by Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool. I believe I mentioned it at the end of the podcast. It's something I use regularly as a big part. of my podcast prep and research process.
I currently only use it at the computer when I'm doing really sort of rigorous, systematic note-taking. But it is, like I mentioned, really the best integration of AI that I've used in any note-taking application.
I'm a bit delirious at the moment because through the insane amount of work that had to be done to bring together the translation for this episode with President Zelensky, I've gotten very little sleep. So here I am trying to put together a few words. when the neurons required to assemble said words are just not firing.
Anyway, the amount of research, the amount of note-taking that I had to do, just the chaos, the whirlpool, the... overwhelming amount of notes that I took across many books and blog posts, and I was listening to just a large number of conversations from all different kinds of perspectives. And I'm not sure those notes were sort of directly useful, but they're building up a knowledge base.
They're building up an intuition. They're making sure that I have a chance to understand, so. Anyway, Notion played a big part of that. Try Notion AI for free when you go to Notion.com slash Lex. That's all lowercase, Notion.com slash Lex to try the power of Notion AI today. This episode is also brought to you by a new sponsor, but obviously one I've used for many, many years.
It's GitHub and GitHub Copilot. So GitHub, for people who somehow don't know if you're listening to this and you're not a developer, it's basically a place where developers go to be happy. and to collaborate and to share and to build, especially for people who are part of the open source world. So it really is a magical place.
Also, they were pioneers in the AI-assisted coding space with GitHub Copilot. Now, GitHub Copilot is not just available in VS Code. It's also available in NeoVim. It's available in all the JetBrains IDEs. I've used JetBrains for a long time and loved it. And eventually drifted away. Still have not tried Neovim. I probably should. Vim, Neo, Vim. That's what all the cool kids are using.
Anyway, GitHub Copilot and all the different features of AI-assisted coding that they're continually developing are available in those IDs. As I mentioned at the end of the episode, I was an Emacs user for probably over 20 years, way more than 20 years. So I don't remember exactly when, but a few months ago, I switched to VS Code, and that was just such a lightbulb moment.
It took a little bit of time to get adjusted. I missed a bunch of stuff in Emacs, especially because I customized everything with Lisp, which is what Emacs is written in, and... It's the sort of the backend customization is written in Lisp, and Lisp is its own sort of programming language with an aura and a spirit that permeated my being for a long time.
So it took a little bit of time to get used to VS Code, but really the magic of Copilot is the thing that allowed me to transition so quickly. And they're facing a lot of steep competition right now. So I'm excited just how seriously they're taking this competitive space of AI-assisted coding. And developers win. The more competition, the more features, developers win.
And I, as a developer myself, just am full of joy when I get to pair a program with a good LLM. Anyway, get started with GitHub Copilot for free today at gh.io. This episode is also brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. I've been traveling crazy places, intense schedules, just chaos, taking risks, all that kind of stuff.
So to get back to where I can drink AG1 and have, for brief moments of time, the feeling of home is really nice. AG1, for whatever reason, is the thing that makes me feel like home. It's the symbol of the daily habits that I do when I have my shit together. And I'm exercising and eating okay and making sure that I'm getting the nutrition I need. In that sense, it's good to be home.
They'll give you a one-month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com. This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix. Now, some number of packets of Element I actually did bring to Ukraine, to Eastern Europe, to Europe as I'm traveling.
It's just so easy to travel with, and especially when I'm fasting for 24 hours or more, which I was doing not by choice, but for the flexibility that it enables. you know, electrolytes really help me avoid the headaches associated with not consuming enough calories or fasting or eating only meat or all that kind of stuff.
It really helps make sure that you avoid what people call the keto flu, but I find that when I'm fasting or doing really low carbs at any stage, it just makes me feel better if I make sure the electrolytes are correct. And the same is true with intense exercise. So get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try it at drinkelement.com slash Lex.
This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep, and it's pod four ultra, and yes, the irony of the fact that I haven't slept for probably 40 hours, and I'm about to crash, the irony of the fact that I am talking or attempting to about a really, really nice mattress. I just can't wait. I can't wait. It cools the bed, warm blanket. It really is.
It's an escape from the insanity, the cruelty, the madness of the world. Yeah. Yeah. So I look forward to that. I look forward to that whenever I take a power nap or trying to get a full night's sleep. Yeah. It's a little ruspice from the madness of the world. Go to aidsleep.com slash Lex and use code Lex to get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra.
This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P, help. It's difficult for me to explain the kind of things that war does to people's minds, to how they see the world, how they interact with each other. I've seen a lot of pain in my travels, and it breaks my heart.
That said, the human mind is remarkably resilient to suffering, and that too gives me a kind of hope that no matter what, the human spirit prevails and flourishes. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it takes generations. But it does flourish. Anyway, I'm reminded of that from BetterHelp. It's a service that helps you figure out what you need to match with a licensed therapist in under 48 hours.
You can check them out at betterhelp.com slash lex and save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash lex. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. And now, dear friends, here's the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
If we can explain why the Ukrainian language is very important, our conversation will be most effective and impactful if we speak in Russian.
I speak Russian perfectly, of course, and I understand everything you are talking about. However, I can't respond in Russian the entire interview. It's because this is how it is today. I am not making anything up. You can see it all for yourself. You can feel and hear it. Today, there were 73 missile attacks against us and people were killed. There were over 100 drones today.
And this is a daily occurrence. The people who attack us, they speak Russian. They attack people who were only recently told that this was actually in defense of Russian-speaking people. And this is why I respect neither the leader or director of today's Russia, nor the people. I just... That's it. And I don't think that you can just...
can just pretend that nothing's happening and give Putin a pass once again for saying that we are one people, that we speak one language, etc. They speak the language of weapons. That is a fact. And we are peaceful people. Peaceful people who want to protect themselves and defend their freedom and their human choice. You know, at the beginning of the war,
I addressed Russians in Russian. Zero effect. They're mute.
They do not listen. They did not listen. Some are afraid. Some have other issues. They have different reasons. It's like when a person is drowning, drowning and people walk by because they can't hear them. And someone walks on by crying, afraid to save them. It doesn't change anything for the one drowning. They need someone to help them.
This is why I honestly despise these people as they are deaf. They began the occupation in the supposed defense of the Russian language. And that's why, with all due respect, I would like to give an interview in Ukrainian. This is very important to me. If there are some points that you want me to explain in Russian, I can certainly do that. I can certainly occasionally speak Russian.
But in general, in general, no. I'm not sure that you will understand me completely. Despite your Ukrainian roots, you are a citizen of the United States, right?
Yes.
That's why I'm surprised that you don't understand. Well, it was a long time ago. I understand that it was a long time ago. Moreover, a lot has changed. A lot has changed.
If I may please allow me to say this in Russian. Yes, many things have changed, but I have hope. I hope that today many Russians will hear this, that Vladimir Putin will hear this, that the American President Donald Trump and the American people will hear this, that everyone will hear this, and yes, Ukrainian language is important symbolically.
But what is also important is that we understand each other well.
For Donald Trump? Is it important for Donald Trump whether I speak Russian or not?
Yes. Because unfortunately, and it hurts to admit, but I cannot speak or understand Ukrainian yet. So your wit, dynamism, and your humanity will not come through as well and as quickly. Remember, I need to wait for two to three seconds to hear it. You have a great sense of humor, great stories. With an interpreter translating, I simply won't see this, but I understand that it's painful.
Another reason is that I hoped we could show that even though it is sometimes said that Russian is banned in Ukraine.
This is not true. I'm speaking Russian now, right? We have people who speak Russian. This is not true, really. It's not. It's really not true. We disrespect Russian now because of Russians. That's all. When they were saving Russian speakers, they killed Russian speakers, many people who actually, many of whom are in the East, right? In the East, they live, lived in the East.
They destroyed their houses, destroyed their lives. It's not a rhetorical thing. It's not all talk and blah, blah, blah. I don't have time for blah, blah, blah. Yes, so it's a very, very, very important and sensitive moment. The message is that we are not one nation. We are not, you know, the same country. We're different countries. Yes, different countries.
And I think what is most important is one. What we're talking about. Not how. We're speaking about it. This is what I think. You're a smart guy. So you have a lot of experience in dialogue of this kind. That's why I think you will understand me. Yeah. Anyway, I think it is far better for Donald Trump to hear my English, not my Russian.
Your English is much better than my Ukrainian. You're getting better and better.
That's true. I'm a very honest guy. That's why I will be very honest with you. Your Ukrainian is not very good, but we will work on it.
Yes. I have many flaws. That's one of them.
Sometimes I can speak English. Sometimes, as I understand, we can be very flexible, right?
Very flexible. Spanish, Swahili. Yeah, you see? Yeah. Javier Millet needs to understand this, so.
By the way, Javier understood me without any words.
The language of love, maybe.
Of respect.
Respect. I respect him.
I had a very good conversation with him. Really brilliant.
May I sometimes speak Russian and sometimes English?
Yes, you can use any language you like. And I think that's a very good rule for this first meeting between us. As you said, maybe we will meet in the future for the second time.
Second and third and fourth?
Yeah, this is good. You can ask questions in the language you'd like, and I will answer in the language I can.
Well, you said you wanted to meet by the sea at some point. So for our next meeting, let's meet by the sea. With pleasure.
Next time, it would be much better to meet by our Ukrainian black or our Azov sea.
You know, I've been to a lot of... I have traveled to many cities in Ukraine, but I have never been to Odessa. And everyone tells me that, and I don't know why. You have to. Can you explain to me why everyone loves Odessa so much? What's there?
You know, what's in Odessa? That's how they say it. What's there? In Odessa, we've got it all. Okay. Odessa. I love Odessa because of its particular temperament. People have their own accent. And it's so... There are many nationalities, you know. There are a lot of stories. Authentic Odessa cuisine. By the way, you know, the cuisine is very different from others.
The dishes are not like any other dishes and everything is very tasty. Also, there are beautiful people.
And today, you know, you understand people very well. Especially after...
After the attacks on Odessa, you understand what the people are like. Just how Odessites are. Very Ukrainian. And that's very cool. I love Odessa. I go there several times a year. I go there several times a year now because, well, now because of strengthening of air defense systems, because of this grain corridor, etc. I go there more often. They have the sun there. They have the sea.
It's Ukraine, and it's very cool there.
Well, when you come and visit me in Texas as a guest for the third time... With pleasure. Let's do this. How about you, my friend Joe Rogan, and I will go get some Texas barbecue together? Who will pay? That's a good question. Putin. Putin. For everything.
He has to pay.
Well, yes, we'll invite him to.
No, no, no, no. Okay. Without him.
Okay, I get it. Understood.
But if the Rome Statute will be accepted by your government before this moment.
Okay. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but Joe has a great comedy club in Austin.
Joe Rogan?
Joe Rogan, yes. And I think that as a person who respects comedy and stand-up comedy, it would be interesting for you to have a look at it.
No, no. I know him and I saw a lot of different videos. He's a very talented person. So it would be a pleasure if you invite me and I'm able to do it. I am a little bit busy.
Yeah.
But if I'll be in the United States, I hope that I will have a conversation and a meeting with President Trump. Okay. And, of course, during my visit, if I'll have the time, it would be a pleasure if you'll invite me. With pleasure.
You know what? I will pay. Good. Yeah.
You know, I had to think about it, but you are the president.
Yes.
With you, with pleasure. When the war is over, please come.
Thanks so much.
And when you're less busy. Thanks so much. If we can go back many years, World War II, tell me the story of your grandfather who fought in World War II.
My grandfather, he graduated from the military, military academy. And from the very beginning of the war, he went to fight. He was in the infantry and he fought through the entire war. He had many wounds. As they used to say back then, his chest is covered in medals. And it's true. He had more than 30. Yes, more than 30. He was the kind of man. He was such... He was such a serious man.
I loved him very much. And we had a very close relationship. He didn't like to tell details about the war. He never... He never boasted. Although I asked him, as a boy would, how many fascists did you kill? He never talked about it. He believed that the war was a great tragedy. A tragedy for everyone. And...
Ukraine was occupied, and it was a tragedy for Ukraine, a tragedy for Europe, and a tragedy for the Jewish people. His own brothers, his entire family were executed. They were tortured by fascists who had occupied Ukraine and their village. His father was the head of the village. And he was killed. They were shot. It was a mass, a mass grave, right? Yes, it was a communal burial.
Some of them were killed outright and others were, they were buried alive. His four brothers, they all went to war. As soon as the war began, they were all there. He was the only one who had a military education and they all died in the war. He was the only one who came back. He had nobody. He came back and he found... Found my grandmother, his future wife.
And she was, she managed, what was it called then? I don't know. They don't have them anymore. It was a childcare facility, an orphanage, so to speak. A place where orphans lived. children who don't have parents, children of war.
And she managed this childcare facility with difficult children, as they used to call them, difficult children who went through the war, who saw their parents killed, and this is how they met. Because these difficult children, they, well, sometimes behave differently. They could steal something, do something bad. There were many, many children in the orphanage.
Yes, that's how she met my grandfather. And I loved him very much. And I think that my grandfather... frankly, would never have believed that this war is possible. He would never have believed it because he worked in the police after the war. He was a colonel. He worked in criminal investigation all his life. So he fought with bandits all his life after the Second World War. But also,
I believe he fought for justice all his life, and we all lived in one apartment. And even after his death, I lived with both of my grandmothers and my parents, two grandmothers, who both lost their husbands. Both of them died. Well, it was an ordinary family, an ordinary family that lived like everyone lived back then in the Soviet Union and even after the Soviets in the 90s.
We lived in one apartment all together. What else is there to say? But I think the most important thing was values, respect. They gave me an education. My parents gave me an education. No one left me money or apartments. So I didn't inherit anything material. But I believe that our real inheritance is here in our minds and in our hearts.
I believe that.
There's a one-second delay. So if, I'm sorry, if you tell a joke, I will laugh about one, two, or three seconds later. There's a delay. So, ordinary family, but not an ordinary time, World War II. World War II. Speaking of mass graves, I was at Bob and Yar yesterday. A large part of my family died there.
In moments like this, such a place serves as a stark reminder of the profound historical gravity of the Second World War. I remember this song from my youth. On June 22nd at 4 o'clock, Kyiv was bombed and the war began. I always wondered how it would feel to live in a moment when everything changed. The path of humanity completely shifts in a single moment, just like that.
What do you think about that moment in 1941? Now, after the 2022 invasion, how do you perceive the Second World War after you have witnessed all of it?
Well, firstly, the war actually started earlier. It started here in Ukraine. Kyiv was bombed, as you quoted. But the war had already begun before that. And I think I perceived it as a start of the full-scale invasion. Well, I think it's hard. It's hard to understand. why nobody wants to listen, look at, and analyze history.
War, the rise of fascism and Nazism, the emergence of Hitler, Goebbels and their entire team. At the time, this wasn't just about one party or even one country. It was essentially a wave, a wave of hatred, a wave of one race, one race above the rest. They were, in fact, constructing and ultimately implemented a theory around this idea, later seizing Europe.
They created a theory of one nation, one race, one world. Their world. Of course, this idea is absolutely senseless, but it has become radicalized over the years and even gained support. A vision of one world. And in principle, the so-called Russian world, the ideology Putin promotes and imposes, it wasn't originally like that.
He was a different person back then, or maybe he was always like this, but his rhetoric was different. At the beginning, remember, he talked about the EU and even about Russia's future being tied to NATO. There were even talks of joining the European Union, NATO. He spoke about shared values with the West. That's how it all sounded back then.
And we must also look at Hitler, who was seriously, before the radical idea of taking over the whole world, he actually made certain steps and everyone believed he was helping the economy. And to be fair, he did take some steps in that direction. But he was a terrifying person. None of those actions justify him, nor do they excuse his actions.
And that's why we cannot look at the Second World War as if it started in 1939. It didn't begin in 1941 either. We need to draw conclusions. When did it start? With the weaknesses of the world. the division of European states, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. All of this happened before 1941.
People who were more informed, those who dug deeper, whether they were politicians or not, whether they were from different walks of life, including business, which was different back then, were speaking about all of this. Hitler won't stop. There'll be a world war. Hitler will destroy nations. Nations. And that's what happened. Someone looked the other way. What I told you about.
Europe was sinking then. I gave you an example of it. But the whole world looked the other way and didn't pay attention and said, no, we can negotiate with him. I'm telling you he is okay. We can negotiate with him. He's just more right-leaning. Or it does not matter what they said. He's just pro. Very pro-nationalist. This is all nonsense. And this is not the first time.
And Hitler isn't the first such case in history. We're dealing with a person who is allowed to stick.
to this desire to destroy.
He was consumed by it and enjoying it. And what happened to Hitler? Now, what about Putin? This invasion was also at four in the morning. Around four in the morning, there were missile strikes on Ukraine. This is the same. I believe that intentions are also the same, but more on that later. By the way, you tell me if this is too long, you can stop me. Never long enough. It's beautiful. Okay, so...
it happened here around four in the morning i before this i must honestly say Everyone said something, predicted something, etc. But I asked only for one thing, primarily from the United States. If you are sure, if you have the evidence, if you talk to him and he tells you that there'll be an invasion, if all this scares you, I only asked for two things.
Send us weapons, or better yet, strengthen us with preventive measures so there would be no war. It wasn't the weapons that I was asking for. I asked for sanctions. Intimidate him. Please don't say that. If he comes, if he crosses borders, if he kills, we're imposing sanctions. Well, this is complete bullshit. Sorry, but really.
Oh, I understand this.
Oh, wonderful. Yes.
I understood one word. Yeah.
So they did not help. I believe that no. And this is a fact. We didn't receive help. If we assume that words are help, well, then yes, we received a lot of it because there were plenty of words. Even more than plenty, yes?
At four in the morning, there were strikes.
Morally, is it possible to prepare for war? No, it doesn't happen like you read in books, see in movies and so on. What happens to you? I was just looking at my wife and children. My children were asleep, but my wife was awake. There were strikes, missile strikes.
We heard them. To you as a living person, how can this be?
You just can't fully believe this. You just don't understand. Why now? Given everything that happened in World War II when millions of people died, none of it mattered. Still at four, at four in the morning, around 4, 3.40, 3.45, remember? Around this time, yes, there were missile strikes. And later, by the way,
A few days after, after the first days of the war, I spoke with Lukashenko on the phone. And he apologized.
And he said that it was not me. Missiles were launched from my territory and Putin was the one launching them. These are his words. I have witnesses. And I apologize, he said. But believe me, that's what he told me. Volodya, this is not me. I'm not in charge, he told me. I'm not in charge. These are just missiles. This is Putin. I told him, don't do that. This was done without me. That's it.
He just, on the phone, I remember this conversation. I told him that I believed. I told him, you are a murderer too, I'm just saying. And he told me, you must understand, you can't fight the Russians. I told him that we never fought them. I said, it's war. The missiles came from your land, from Belarus. How did you allow this? Then he replied, all right, retaliate then.
I still remember him telling me, hit the refinery. You know how much I care about it. Moser Oil Refinery, is that it? Can't recall. Moser Oil Refinery. I told him, what are you on about? What retaliation?
Forgive me, Volodya. Yes. Yes. This was at five in the morning?
No, no, no. This was during the first or maybe the second day. Second or third day of the war.
Ah, I see.
Well, after that, I went back home. I was home with my children, with my wife. I just went to my wife very quickly that night at four o'clock. Yes, and just told her, get the children, get ready. You'll probably need to go to my office very soon. And I left. That's it. At this moment... You're no longer a father.
What happened to me, unfortunately, because I believe that this is, and not only do I believe, I understand, especially now that all of this is the most important thing because your country is your family. It's the strength is in your family. And this is the most important thing. And I'm the president. And therefore I had to stop being a father in my own family. And my wife had to do everything.
She had to do everything regarding children, regarding safety. And, and I had to deal with the state because I'm the president and this is my duty. And I, by the way, I'm taking this very seriously. I went to the office and here we are now. You're very welcome.
Well, at that moment, on February 24th, 2022, everything changed again. Just like in June 1941. Everything changed. And history took a turn. The history of humanity took a turn. And for you too. You were the president. You were... You were talking about fighting corruption, about the country's freedom, about interesting and innovative reforms. But that morning of February 22nd, everything changed.
Could you tell me about that morning, the details of your actions, when you had to quickly make difficult decisions? What was the process for you? How did you make these decisions? Did you discuss them with people you trust? to understand how to respond to this invasion in every technical, political, and military aspect. What was the process for you? How did you make the decision?
According to our legislation, in principle, I'm the supreme commander of the armed forces of Ukraine. So I had to give corresponding orders. Yes, I have a military office. And then later there was a military headquarters where all key people gathered. This is not only about the military, it's about energy, etc. All key things. But at that moment, I made the decisions. Quickly and without a doubt.
And... And I cannot say that I am just that kind of person. I'm just a living person who believed that if help is needed right now to help evacuate people, help with children. Several cities were blocked. I was only thinking about how to deliver food there within a day. We did a lot of things, although we understood that they, in fact, occupied part of our state.
And we distributed weapons to people. That's how it was.
Trucks came and simply distributed weapons to people so that they could defend the capital to ordinary people just on the street, to ordinary people who understood that if the Russians entered the city, then we would have the same thing that's happening in other cities per the information we received. thanks to digitalization, by the way, we had very good digitalization before this.
And we preserved a lot. And even when they were surrounding certain cities, a lot of things still worked. The banking system, the internet, we had television. And thanks to this, I made several decisions to ensure that people are united and have all the information. A Russia is very good at spreading large-scale disinformation.
Fortunately, I have two decades of experience managing a production studio. TV channels and large media resources. I understood that we needed to build an information network very quickly. Thanks to this, I began to address the people constantly. This happened several times, three to five times a day. In fact, I became an information source.
for people who were in cities that were cut off from other information. And it was very important for me to keep all things digital, to keep the internet, to stay in touch with everyone, with all the people. Initially, that's the contact we had. And then we also built a media platform where we had all the news agencies, agencies of Ukraine, And this network was called Marathon.
And it was also very important for the people to trust us. And people had to receive information. Why? There were waves. There were waves of Russian on the first day who said he ran away. I had to go out into the street. I left the office and went outside. I had to do this because I was showing that this was no green screen, you know, to show that it was the street, not some digital manipulation.
I mean, I did these things. Then I touched various objects. Now people might think that these are small things, but I was actually showing that I was in a real place. All of this had an impact. I was absolutely sure of my actions. And these contacts, several contacts. And then I spoke to the Russians. I addressed Russians. I really did. And then only after that, I gathered.
It was the first day when I invited all of the journalists here, wasn't it? That was on the first day, I think. Well, not here, here. To the press center in this building. I talked to journalists. I asked them not to leave because we needed weapons. At that moment, they were handing out rifles to people. And for me, journalists and media platforms were essential voices.
There were various journalists from different countries here, and they were essentially stuck. And I asked them for contacts, those who had access to Russians, Belarusians, Kazakhs who understood everything, the same information. And I spoke to them. And I spoke to them and spoke in Russian. I told them, you must stop Putin. This is terrible. This is horror. This is war. You must stop him.
And if you stand up now, if you speak out, and if you go out into the streets, this was very important. I spoke to them in Russian to show them that there was no problem and that all of these pretexts were made up. This is why it's so painful to talk about the Russian language too, because Look, if a person does not want to listen, they will not listen, no matter what language we speak.
I disagree with you here. I think and hope that many people in Russia will hear us today. They blocked YouTube recently.
Are you aware of this in their country?
I know. And I simply guarantee that this conversation will travel fast on the Internet. Everyone will hear you. They will hear you. including the president of Russia, will hear you. This is why I have hope.
He is actually deaf, even if he speaks to you. He is deaf by his very nature. Do you understand the difference? You know, for instance, when you talk to Musk, you're talking to an innovator, a scientist about rockets. You talk about how to save on costs and how they land. And on the other hand, Putin doesn't launch rockets to save money, but to kill people.
Do you think you can talk to Putin about technology? Your guys were interviewing him and he told them about tribal history. Do you understand? Imagine a Russian man in his country listening to him. You know what Musk is about? Technology, Mars, artificial intelligence. And this guy Putin is standing there bare-assed, pontificating about tribes. You've got to understand.
You think that when you do interviews, like Mr. Tucker, who did an interview there, that you're about to make them friends? How could you? What does this have to do with friends? He's different.
He is simply different.
But it's still necessary.
A mammoth stands before you.
By the way, I must say that when you said bare-assed, it was not translated. Could the interpreter please translate? This is so that you can understand. Now he explained everything to me. I understand. That's great. Now I fully understand.
That's great.
But we still need to talk.
One should always speak with someone who listens. And you must speak when you know that this will benefit you, bring peace and calm to the world, not the other way around. I love President Trump's message when he speaks. I think that we share a position on peace through strength. That is very important. It means that if you are strong, you can speak. And we need to be strong.
And Ukraine has to be strong. Strong enough. Otherwise, what for? So, he... You know who, like Voldemort, who must not be named.
Yes, he's like Voldemort. He... thrives, subsists, and lives on being subjectivized. Instead of isolation, he is offered to step out into the light. He's darkness personified, and you offer him, as it were, to be subjectivized. Why? There's only one reason. Fear. And you say, we need to talk. Listen, we need to be in a strong position and not talk, but end the war. Yes.
Yes, it is possible through dialogue. We're not opposed to it. You just need to be in a strong position to make the other person want it. Do you think he wants to end the war? That's what you suggested? I think this is naive. I'm sorry. With all due respect, it's naive to think he wants to finish the war. It's... Tell you what. The circumstances... Sorry for interrupting.
There's something we need. I think that President Trump not only has will... He has all these possibilities. And it's not just talk. I really count on him. And I think that our people really count on him. So he has enough power. to pressure him, to pressure Putin not into wanting to stop it. No, he will not want to, to pressure him to actually stop it. That is the difference.
Don't rely on his will, Putin's will to stop. You won't see it. That's what I think. Sorry.
No, sorry. I interrupted you first. But what I would want, I do have what some what some might call a naive dream of you sitting down with Putin and Trump and negotiating a deal about a ceasefire and together finding a path to long-term peace. And I think this requires strength, requires negotiations. There are a lot of carrots and sticks here that can be used to make a real deal.
And Trump is very keen on making a deal and ready to negotiate.
Can I ask you a question?
Yeah.
I just really want you and I to be on the same page. It's very important to be in the same information space. Extremely important. Let's talk a bit about the ceasefire. Let me describe the situation to you. In December 2019, in Normandy, in Paris, at the Élysée Palace, Macron, Merkel, Putin and I agreed. On the ceasefire, the U.S. wasn't there.
And this, by the way, was a weak point of the meeting. If you'd like, we can later discuss why they weren't there. It's a security guarantee thing in general. It's Germany's position, etc. We agreed on an exchange of hostages and all for all exchange. We made a deal to exchange everyone for everyone. I think you know that.
And there was also a meeting that lasted many hours, a meeting where we made a deal with him. Everyone was tired. It was just the two of us in the end. And I proposed a ceasefire. By the way, no one in Ukraine believed Few believed in the ceasefire and he wanted troop withdrawal.
I calculated that if there were a withdrawal of troops from the line of contact the way Russians proposed, it would take 20 years. I proved it to him just in terms of time, square kilometers, namely the length of the line of contact or delimitation line. And we agreed on what I told him that... It will not work out. But I had many points because I was deeply involved in the issue.
I was involved very deeply. It's my thing in general. If I start doing something, I can't stand there like that guy I spoke about with my ass out, you know? I must be dressed. I must be prepared. I must be prepared better. better than anyone in front of me. You do sports, right? I practiced for many years and we know what fights are like, what boxing is, what Thai boxing is. This is what I did.
And I loved it very much. When you step into the ring, you understand everything pretty much. And so I stepped into it and I was, I was definitely well prepared, but he wasn't.
No. He was not deeply involved in the process.
What border? Where is it? How long will it take to disengage troops? And why wasn't he involved? You want to know? Because he wasn't going to do any of this. This is what confused me. If you are not deeply involved in the issue, well then, you... It's... It's as if you don't really need the result. That's what I think. So what happened?
We agreed that there will be gas continuation, gas transit in 2019. We agreed with him. This was the security for Europe. Merkel asked me for it. And this was extremely important for Germany. We agreed with him. Secondly, we agreed that for him it was just money. So secondly, we agreed on an exchange. For me, this was the most important thing. For them, gas was, for me, was the people.
And this is a fact. Because I wanted to have a humanitarian advantage so that there would be further meetings that would lead to sustained peace.
And thirdly, Ceasefire. Ceasefire you spoke about. What happened?
The gas contract was signed because he needed it. And by the way, he knew everything about it. As for exchange, we took the first step and exchanged the people.
Regarding the ceasefire. Well, They started killing us in about a month. So, I called him.
And I told him, we agreed on a ceasefire, didn't we? Well, it wasn't a piece of toilet paper, was it? This is serious business. Or so it seemed. It really was serious. Merkel, Macron, you and I, we all agreed on this together. A ceasefire is important, isn't it? Not for New Year's because everyone was celebrating New Year's. And now they're offering us a Christmas ceasefire. It's all the same.
A ceasefire for two, three days just to get some praise. But this isn't a performance. This isn't some kind of theater. No, this is about people's lives. And that's what happened. After that, I called him a few more times. I think I only had two, three calls with him in total. I asked him for a ceasefire. He told me it couldn't be. We will figure it out now.
People from the occupied territory, Russians and separatists, they were all there together. They continued to shoot and kill our people.
Yes, the front lines were quiet, but they killed people.
They were killing people, and I kept calling him. I called again and again, but there was nothing. Until, after a few months, the Russians stopped answering the phone. We did not have any contact since. I wanted another meeting, like we had in Normandy. I wanted the next meeting. I wanted to find a solution, but the Russians refused.
We tried to make it happen through various European countries, and not only European, but the Russians refused. They passed along some kind of bullshit, made excuses. They didn't want it. Meanwhile, they were sending their snipers. We had evidence, living proof, even video evidence, because some of them were captured back then. Those were the snipers in training. They were training them.
They were training them. And later those snipers operated in Syria and Africa. These snipers were training in our country, in the east. Ukrainians were living targets. They were shooting from the other side, killing people, women, people, children. They were shooting. It was a hunt. By the way, it was in the Russian-speaking region in the east where, according to him, everyone is speaking Russian.
That's where they were shooting, where the situation currently is the most tense. They killed people. We sent this information, sent pictures. We sent them to the UN, sent them everywhere. We worked very hard, very persistently. I met with everyone. But who thought of Ukraine back then? They didn't notice it much. They didn't pay much attention to Crimea being destroyed.
illegally occupied either. And to be honest, the United States of America too, everyone was somewhat silent about this issue. That's how it was. It was like that before a full-scale war.
I want to ask you a question about the ceasefire. For example, in Mariupol, in Mariupol today, are
There are American and Ukrainian journalists. And everyone will tell you who had contact, who has contact now with Mariupol, who fled from there in the last minutes just before the occupation, or who was able to leave to escape after the occupation. Chernov, who won an Oscar, was among them. And the journalists that left Mariupol, they are here. By the way, we had a conversation.
they will tell you that 20,000, 30,000 civilians were tortured and buried there. We do not know the number of victims. People who didn't want to work with them, who refused to cooperate with them. People who went on strikes to protest. People who did not want to work with the Russians who occupied Mariupol. And this is one example, just with this city. And I have a question for you.
What about the millions of children? And I will ask you in Russian so that you hear this without delay. What about the millions of children over there? What if we just arranged a ceasefire without understanding what would happen next? without understanding what will happen to Ukraine's security guarantees. What about the millions of children in the occupied territories? What should I tell them?
What am I to tell them? What is it I should tell them? What? Whatever? Hey, all of you over there, see ya, and those tens of thousands of people buried there, they were, is that what we want? Are we ready to forgive them for this? We must at least take the first step. If this is a ceasefire, we must know that there is a security guarantee for the part of Ukraine under our control.
We need it so that he will not come back. This is very important. And what do we say to the people who live in those territories? These are millions of people. Did you know that since 2014 in Donetsk, in the Crimea, this is happening in Melitopol as well. as in Berdyansk now, they are making all these kids of drafting age go and fight. And if they don't go, they will be killed.
This is, do you understand what's happening? That is why a ceasefire. Everything I said, what I wish for, and I believe in President Trump's power to use all of this information to come up with a way to make Ukraine strong. And be strong.
Why am I saying that? I will give you an example.
President Trump will be in the same situation as I was in 2019. precisely the same situation. I want to end the war. We want a lasting peace for Ukraine. We must do this, the ceasefire, exchange people, and then diplomatically return all territories. And we will do this through diplomacy. What will happen next with President Trump?
If the ceasefire happens without security guarantees, at least for the territory we control, what does he get? If He manages to make a ceasefire deal.
And three months later, Putin launches a new wave of attacks. What will Trump look like? What will Ukraine look like? What will everyone look like?
Putin will just do it. And why would Putin do it? Because today, he's afraid of Trump. But once Trump manages, for example, to do a ceasefire deal without serious security guarantees for Ukraine. He will give a pass to Putin. Not that he wants to. No, he does not want that. I believe in what he says. But he will give Putin an opportunity. Because in Putin's head, he wants me to fight with Trump.
Putin's plan is to end the occupation of our territory. This is in his sick head. And I'm absolutely sure of this. That is why I told you, don't wait for Putin to want to stop the war. Pressure him so that he is forced to stop the war. That's important.
It's important to say that what you said about the children is a tragedy. War is hell. But let me say again, we must find a path to peace.
There is one.
What is it?
There is one. Before ceasefire, strong Ukraine. Strong Ukraine's position? Yes, we can speak about it with Trump. For me, we can speak about security guarantees. But a quick step, a quick step is NATO. A partial membership NATO. Yes, I understand. I understand. I understand Trump's feelings about NATO. I heard him. He's thinking through all of it, of course.
But anyway, yes, NATO is a strong security guarantee for all the people, for us. Part of security guarantees. The second part is the arms aid package, which we will not use if... A ceasefire works. Nobody will use the weapons. For what? But it has to stay.
But with all due respect to the United States and to the administration, not like before, I don't want the same situation like we had with Biden. I ask for sanctions now, please. And weapons now. And then we will see. If they start it again, of course, we'll be happy if you'll give us more and you will stand with us shoulder to shoulder. Of course, that is right.
But, but, it's different when you have weapons. Putin wouldn't have been able to occupy so much territory. It was very difficult for us to push him out. But we didn't have weapons before, and that is the same situation. It can be the same situation. I'm just sharing this with you. Like I said at the very beginning, I want to be very honest with you and with your audience. Yes, it's true.
If we do not have security guarantees, Putin will come again.
To make it clear, let's describe. The idea that you are speaking about, I would like to offer you other ideas too. But right now, your idea is that NATO accepts Ukraine minus the five regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Crimea.
Just so you understand the situation, the invitation to NATO is legislatively issued to Ukraine. So to us, all those territories are still Ukraine. But NATO so far can only act in the part that is under Ukrainian control. This can be negotiated. I am sure about that. Yes, this would not be a great success for us. But if we see a diplomatic way to end the war, this is one of the ways. So it is.
Sorry. That is a start. Secondly, weapons, arms aid package. I'm not ready to discuss this publicly right now. It's all written down. And President Trump might have seen it or not. But we've got no secrets from him. Yes. But mostly it depends on the willingness of the United States. Because some of it will come from the EU, some from the United States. Of course, together.
So not just from the United States. No, no, no. We need unity with this package. So the package and sanctions. Yes, sanctions. But I think it's in the interest of all the smart people to not have Russian energy on the market in general. So he has to stop it. That's all. It's fine. American oil, American gas is okay. Why not? And it's cheaper. So it will be cheaper for the whole world.
The money will go to the United States. And I think he will be happy. And the president and your people will be happy. But it's your decision. I'm just sharing. Yes, and cheap oil. So Putin won't have so much money for the war. And that, that's it.
But this is difficult because it's a lot. You're saying to continue the sanctions on Russia to accept Ukraine into NATO. I need to ask you some difficult questions about this. Yes, go on. I trust and respect your words today. Many people respect and love you in America. Trump respects you. Loves me? Oh, come on now. Remember last time you corrected me when I said that you love Javier Millet?
You said, no, no, no. I respect him. So let's not talk about love today. But could we talk seriously about guaranteeing Russia's security?
Okay, can I interview you a little? Question is, what land is the war happening on? And where did it start? On our soil, on our territory. International law was violated. The sovereignty of our country was violated. Civilians were killed. Tens of thousands of our people were taken hostage. And everyone will tell you, this happened. This is what happened.
When I speak with the Global South, which is trying to balance the two sides because of the history, because of their roots, and because of their shared economic interests, with Russia in the past, and now, of course, when you talk to them, They are speaking a little bit like you. I mean, they're balancing a little bit, you know. Yeah, a little bit in between. But we will work on it. Yeah.
It's our first meeting. During the second one, you will be more on our side. Yeah. But it's just... You're very convincing. Very charismatic. Yeah, thank you. But when I speak with them, when I speak, it's very important. Even with their balancing attitude towards the war, They all recognize that this is a war. This is not just internal conflict. This is a full-scale war.
That began, that Putin began. And all of them, all of them, if you talk to them, they say... But then they all recognize that, that it's his own big mistake, Putin's mistake, and that he's not right. That's why I said, no, no, he's not right. And you have to begin from this. If you begin... At the middle, between Ukraine and Russia, of course, we can speak like this.
You are in the middle and say, okay, what's going on? There is a fight. Where is the fight? It's not the fight like in Europe, when Napoleon is fighting against somebody in the middle of Europe. No, this is not in the middle of somewhere of the planet, not the planet. It's concretely on our land. So, one. Country with one army, one person came to another. That's it. It's very clear.
Again, I would like us to find a path to peace. So let us nevertheless try to start in the middle. What other ideas do you think, Mike? You are a very intelligent person.
And... Your Russian isn't that good either.
Huh.
And I told you that this is only our first meeting.
My English is not very good either. Your English is very good. Thank you. To be honest, I'm terrible at speaking in every language. Well, there are other ideas. For instance, sorry to say this. It sounds crazy, but what if both Ukraine and Russia are accepted into NATO?
Putin himself spoke about Russia, maybe about NATO. What you just said is very correct. What are the guarantees for Russia? It's not like I'm even interested what happens to them. To be honest, I don't care what will happen to them in the future after the war ends. But these are our borders and we must understand what is going on there. Well, the NATO guarantees for Ukraine.
Actually, this is also a security guarantee for the Russians. Frankly, I talked about this many times before. Sorry, I'm speaking figuratively, but as an example, if you were a father who lost his children, a grown man, a grown man, a man, an adult, and the war has ended. And he never got justice for real. For example, somebody decides to freeze support. We won't give you anything.
You can't fight. You can't continue. So we stop when we stop. Without any guarantees, without any support, without financing, without... Okay. And nobody... is held accountable, but the man lost his children. He will not get anything. None of the killers will be in prison. All the sanctions will be removed. And he lost his children. And we have thousands of such people.
Why do you think they will not go to Russia? We'll find a way and we'll not kill the Russian soldiers there or somebody there. Why wouldn't they? It's human nature. It's not about us. It's everyone. Read American writers. Always after any war. If there is no justice for people... There must be punishment for the crime. It is only justice. How come my child was taken away? The war took him.
This is very scary. And even whether it was my son who was fulfilling his constitutional duty or simply a missile that struck a civilian child. And if there is no justice and the killers are not punished, why wouldn't these people come back with hate?
They will definitely come back. So when we talk about NATO, NATO is not only stopping Russia. Do not forget, NATO is stopping us too.
Because there will not be justice for everyone. We know that NATO does not have the right to solve certain issues with war. NATO is a security alliance. It is protection. not brainwashing. What Putin claims that this is offensive is not true. NATO is a defensive alliance, a security alliance, and it is security for Russia.
But unfortunately, there are many options for peace that don't involve NATO inviting Ukraine as a member. Can you imagine security guarantees without NATO membership? For example, if America simply leaves NATO, I believe there is a High likelihood that Donald Trump would do such a thing.
I think it's very bad for NATO. That's the end. That's the death of NATO. It is a pity because I think that it's a very good alliance. Maybe not everything is good there from the bureaucracy or money, etc. But totally, countries who are in NATO, they don't fight. There is no war on the land of any country. of these NATO countries. I think that is the answer. It works or not.
It works politically or militarily. I don't know. But it works. So without Trump, without the United States of America, there will not be NATO. That is the first. So, and you say, can we imagine that, that what?
That there could be security guarantee without... No, we don't need...
guarantees without the united states that's it because the united states is a very strong powerful country the united states puts the point of course putin said that it's just the soviet union where by the way ukraine was the second strong republic militarily yes by the way but he he of course always forgets about it but during the world war ii
without help of the United States, support of your troops, support of your industry, industrially, militarily, without your money, without your people, Hitler could win. So the United States helped a lot. Of course, Europe, USSR, and of course, everybody fought. Everybody did a lot. But without the United States, it couldn't be such.
I don't use the word success because I think that there is no war which ends successfully because this is a war. Seven figure losses, heavy losses. losses in World War II. Millions of people. And that's why without the United States, security guarantees are not possible. I mean these security guarantees which can prevent Russian aggression.
Of course, we have security guarantees, bilaterally, with some countries financing support of our internal military and defending and humanitarian issues and demining, which is very important, and helping our children in the school networks. By the way, this is a very sensitive point. How many? How many bomb shelters? How many bomb shelters we build with the partners for the children?
And it's a pity that they are underground. But Can you imagine their eyes? When they came after COVID, you understand what does it mean COVID, but they had COVID and the war, and together they didn't see each other for so many years. And when they saw each other, even underground, they were very happy and smiling. So we have such security guarantees everywhere. But it's not enough to prevent.
Yes, preventive measures also work. To prevent the aggression of Putin.
Your English is better than my Russian. This is wonderful. I'm not sure. I'm just giving you compliments.
Thank you.
You're supposed to do that kind of thing to a president.
Thank you so much. Okay. Once again. Come on. Without NATO guarantees. I have a dream that Let's say on January 25, or sometime at the end of January this year, you will sit down with Donald Trump, with Vladimir Putin, and together negotiate a ceasefire with strict security guarantees. And an agreement will be signed. What will this look like without NATO?
I will make it clear. And so, first of all, I think January 25th or some other day. Well, you just call it January 25th. And I don't mind. It's my birthday.
And we sit down. First of all, with Trump. We agree with him on how we can stop the war, stop Putin. It is important for us to sit down. with him.
Secondly, it is very important for us that Europe, which is very important for us because we are part of Europe and not only geographically, geopolitically, but also in the European Union where we will be. For us, it is very important that Europe also has a voice. It's the second thing. It won't be long because Europe will be looking at us and we'll be looking at Trump.
And by the way, I now see that when I talk about something with Donald Trump, whether we meet in person or we just have a call, all the European leaders always ask, how was it? This shows the influence of Donald Trump. And this has never happened before. With an American president, I tell you from my experience, this also gives you confidence, you know, that he can stop this war.
That is why we and Trump come first and Europe will support Ukraine's position. Because they understand that Ukraine has every right to have its voice heard in this because we are at war. Trump and I will come to an agreement. And then if, and I am sure that he can offer strong security guarantees together with Europe. And then we can talk to the Russians.
That's right. Not just three of us sitting down at once. And you still talk to me like that?
Do you know how? As if Putin wants to sit down and talk, but Ukraine does not.
This is not true. I think that, yes, he is, in fact, Ready to talk. Did you talk to him? On the phone or what?
How do you normally talk to him?
I don't know. Normally by the sea. The same as with you. He invites you to the sea with me. Just the three of us.
No, no. One of us may drown.
Who? Are you good at swimming?
Yes, I am a good swimmer.
You're a good swimmer.
Well... And I would like to add that if you have any contact with them, I just want to hear what happens then.
I have never talked to Vladimir Putin, but I have a feeling that he is ready because Donald Trump is ready. I hope you are ready. And this is not just a feeling, but a dream. I have a dream here that the three of you will get together in a room and make peace.
And I want to understand what it looks like, what security guarantees look like that would satisfy Ukraine, that would satisfy Russia.
Ukraine needs security guarantees first and foremost. We are in danger. That is why they are called so. This is no joke to me. Let's take a few steps back. Interesting. Why are security guarantees, a strong position of Ukraine, strong weapons and so on so important? I will give you A little history lesson. Although I think you have prepared yourself and know everything perfectly.
Well, you can correct me on that. Yes. Ukraine had security guarantees. The Budapest Memorandum. Nuclear weapons are the security guarantees that Ukraine had. Ukraine had nuclear weapons. I do not want to characterize it as good or bad. Today, the fact that we do not have them is bad. Why? Because this is war.
Today we are at war because you unleashed, because you have unleashed the hands of a nuclear power. A nuclear power is fighting against us, against Ukraine and doing what it wants. By the way, even you are now talking about ceasefire, just a ceasefire. Maybe give flowers to Putin. Maybe to say, thank you so much for these years. That was a great part of my life. No, we are not just ready for this.
Why? The Budapest memorandum, nuclear weapons, this is what we had. Ukraine used them for protection. This does not mean that someone attacked us. That doesn't mean that we would have used it. We had that opportunity. These were our security guarantees. Why am I talking about this in detail? Because if you take the Budapest memorandum, by the way, I discussed this with President Trump.
We have not finished this conversation yet. We will continue it. Regarding the Budapest memorandum, the Budapest memorandum included security guarantees for Ukraine. At first, three. Three. the most important security guarantors for Ukraine, three strategic friends and partners of Ukraine. This was in agreement. United States of America, Russia, Britain, France and China joined.
There were five states that these are not even security guarantees. We now understand that this is not a guarantee of security because on the one hand, these are security guarantees, but there was an English word, as far as I understand, assurance. It is translated as assurance.
Assurance, right? And in Russian, it will be... And what? Assurance. That is, give up nuclear weapons because you were under pressure of the U.S. and Russia for Ukraine to give them up.
These two powers were exerting pressure. These two states negotiated to ensure that Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons. Ukraine agreed. These, these are the largest states. This is the nuclear five that does not, not even provide security guarantees. Now we just need to find these people and we just need to put in jail all of those who frankly invented all this.
So confidence, so confidence, assurance.
Assurance that Ukraine will be territorially integral with its sovereignty.
It was a piece of paper. If you are curious, by the way, that after occupying part of our Donbas and Crimea, Ukraine sent diplomats three times. I don't think I remember. Three times within a few years. We sent letters to all security guarantors, to all members of the Budapest Memorandum. What did they send? That what was written on the piece of paper. Consultations.
Ukraine holds consultations if its territorial integrity is violated. And everyone should be in consultation. Everyone must come.
Everyone must meet urgently. USA, Britain, Russia, France, China. Did anyone come, you ask?
No. Did anyone reply to these letters, official letters? They are all recorded by diplomats. Did anyone conduct consultations? No. And why not? They didn't give a fuck. This is understandable in Russian, right? That as Russia didn't give a damn, neither did all the other security guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum.
None of them gave a damn about this country, these people, these security guarantees, etc. We take a break. This will be a Budapest Memorandum. The last time with me, imagine how many years it was with me, In February 2022. In February 2022, the war began.
A full-scale war. Letters for consultations have been sent. No one answers. Next, we are taking a break from the Budapest Memorandum.
The question is simple about Budapest. Can we trust this? No. Whichever country out of these five sat at the negotiating table, just a A piece of paper.
Believe me, we will save you. No. Another. This is a train. This is a train with waste paper.
With security guarantees. Which Ukraine has been riding for many years. The second car on this train is the Minsk agreements. The Normandy format and the Minsk agreements. where it was written, where the signatories were. The United States of America was no longer there. I understand that Obama was here at the time.
And as far as I know, I think they were simply not interested in what happened to Ukraine and where it was in general, where it was located. Well, somewhere there. Part of something. People, well, people and let it be. Let it be with these people. The United States simply did not participate in the Minsk agreements.
2008.
2008.
Bucharest. Mr. Bush. President of the United States. Republican. says that Ukraine should be in NATO. This is the voice of Republicans. Check it out. Ukraine should be in NATO. Everybody's looking at the U.S., always. All in favor. Who is against? Merkel. So she opposes, and she forced everyone not to give Ukraine an invitation to join NATO because that would be a step.
Seriously, Republicans were in favor. The U.S. was in favor because Republicans... and Bush were not afraid of anyone. They were not afraid of anyone, and they knew that Ukraine rightly wanted to join NATO. She chooses so. And what is the question? Well, people made their choice. Well, and the Russians will not look that way. That was not the case then. Why? Because the Russians were different.
Next, Minsk. We didn't succeed.
After the Minsk agreements, as I told you, hundreds of meetings were held. I have had hundreds of meetings since 2019. We could not think about a ceasefire. A ceasefire is our offer. This is not somebody's suggestion. This is mine. I would like. I wanted to in Ukraine. Society was divided. Not everyone wanted to. Half did not want to. Half were against. Half were in favor.
Some of them shouted, do not believe it. Some of them shouted, believe it. I am the president of Ukraine. I was given a mandate of trust by 70% of the population to take appropriate steps. And I made them. This is not a joke. We'll just sit the three of us. I am simply telling you what is. This is, how can I tell you? These meetings must be serious and prepared.
And prepared with those who want peace. Ukraine wants peace. U.S. wants peace. We have to sit down with Trump. And that is 100%. First and foremost, number one. Moreover, he told me on the phone that he is waiting for us to meet. And there will be an official visit. And my visit would be the first or one of the first to him. And for him, this topic is very important.
I know that he has his own matters, American issues, I understand. I heard his election program, but regarding international affairs, I think our issue is one of the most pressing issues for President Trump. Therefore, I believe very much, I trust his words, and I hope we will meet again. We need to prepare.
We have many plans to build on, and they exist, and they are supported by many countries, but we need his vision. He needs to look at all these details, but his vision, please, because he can't stop Putin because Putin is afraid of him. That's a fact. But Trump is a president of a democratic country and he does not come for life. He is not Putin. He will not come for 25 years.
He will come for his term. Please tell me.
Well, for example, he came for four years.
And for the fifth year, Putin came with a war. Will it make Trump feel better that there was no war during his time and that Ukraine was destroyed after him? Why destroyed?
Putin is whoever, a killer whoever, but not a fool. He will be prepared.
He knows all mistakes. He understands how we defeated his army after the invasion began. He realized that this was not a Soviet war and that this would not happen with us. He will prepare. He will let everything into arms production. He will have lots of weapons and there will be a very large army. And you think that after such four years without a war, he did not finish us.
He will return and fight only against Ukraine. He will destroy everything around. And if you say there is a risk that Trump, President Trump, will withdraw from NATO, for example, this is a decision of the United States. I'm simply saying that if it does, Putin will destroy Europe. Calculate the size of army in Europe. It's just that I say it for a reason. Do the calculation.
Why did Hitler conquer all of Europe then? Almost. Just count, remember, his armies of millions. Calculate what Europe has. What are the largest armies? We have the largest army. The Ukrainian army is the largest in Europe. The second place after us is four times smaller than us.
France.
200,000?
I think the French have about 200,000. We have 980. So this powerful coalition of European nations. That will not be enough.
Yes, it's not going to be enough. But you're a smart man. There's a lot of ideas. Partnerships with Global South, India, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, economic partnerships, political partnerships. It all protects you.
30,000, 40,000.
Or maybe 500. They can bring many people. Why?
Because they have order, autocracy and everything. Can Europe bring people together? No. Will Europe be able to build an army consisting of two to three million people? No, Europe will not want to do this. And for what? We definitely don't want a world war with you. There is no such purpose. There is no such purpose as gathering everyone. We do not want any war. We want to stop the Russians.
And they invite North Korean soldiers.
Invited. Their faces are burned.
They themselves burn their faces. Those who cannot escape, injured or killed. There's a video. Everything I'm telling you, there is evidence of this. So that they are not recognizable, right?
It means... What does it mean? It's out of values which share Europe.
Europe counts. It means that those guys... They don't count. It's count, yes? They don't count the number of people. That is the answer. Can they move more? Yes. Can they move dozens of thousands? Yes, because we see what they have. Last year, for example, Europe gave us one million artillery rounds. We produced a lot ourselves. But they gave us initiative. It was initiative.
One million artillery rounds. And of 155 and etc. We produced more. But North Korea gave Putin 3.7.
Just gave him.
So he also has a deficit for today. It means he needs what? He needs time. But the number of soldiers.
Yes. And the number of artillery rounds is not everything.
As you have said, let's say Donald Trump guarantees security for four years.
You can form partnerships with India, with Saudi Arabia that enforce punishment, the stick. on oil prices, for example, if any aggressive action is taken. You can actually even build, I've met a lot of incredible Ukrainian tech people, IT people. You can build great companies that form partnerships with the United States, that form partnerships with China.
And that is a big leverage against aggression of however many million artillery rounds. And that sheet of paper You don't need a sheet of paper of protection.
Ah, that's you. Well, when you speak. In English. In English, yeah. You don't even need answers because when you now we're talking, you already answered on all the questions. The first one is that during this time, you need just cooperation, a lot of money for this military industry. In Ukraine or in Europe, with India, Saudi Arabia, Saudi and the United States, you need a lot of money.
So the question is where you will get it. So my answer was to Trump. I said, this is one of the security guarantees. Take 300 billions of frozen Russian assets. We will take it. Take money, what we need for our interior production, and we will buy all the weapons from the United States. We don't need gifts. from the United States, it will be very good for your industry.
For the United States, we will put money there, Russian money. Not Ukrainian, not European, Russian money, Russian assets. They have to pay for this. We will put it and we will make it. This is one of security guarantees? Yes, of course. Because this is a military guarantee? Yes. But
Then the second you said, that energy price and a lot of sanctions on products and the Russian shadow fleet and etc. That is the second answer we spoke about before. Yes, put more sanctions on them. More sanctions. It's okay. Not to take off sanctions.
It's okay with you, but it's not going to be okay with the president of Russia.
Yes, but I'm not thinking how it will be very good for him.
He's still a killer. I understand, but unfortunately, the reality is that a compromise is needed in order to reach an agreement.
So, in your understanding, the fact that he is no in jail after all the murders, he is not in jail assuming all the murders, and no one in the world is able to put him in his place... Send him to prison? Do you think this is a small compromise?
This is not a small compromise, and to forgive him will not be a small compromise. To forgive? No one will forgive.
This is absolutely impossible to forgive him. We cannot get into the head and soul of a person who lost their family. Nobody never will accept this. Absolutely impossible. I don't know, do you have children?
No, not yet, but I would like to. Yes, God bless.
And this is the most important thing in life. And they simply took away the most precious thing from you, will you ask? Who ruined your life before going to rip their head off? I'm just curious. They took your child away. Are you going to ask who did this? And they will answer that that dude did this. You will say, oh, well, then there are no questions. No, no, no.
You will go fucking hell and bite their head off. And it will be fair.
Can murderers be forgiven?
That's why you make security guarantees. What I told you for those who are here and what we control and what will not happen. And that those who lost, we will never forget. And a matter of time. But when you gave us NATO, I just said, this means that after a while, everything I said about NATO, after a while, Ukraine will not go against Russia.
And Russia will not go against Ukraine because you are in NATO. I am just saying, is not that a compromise? So, NATO is a compromise. This is not just a security guarantee, in my opinion.
Look, when rockets were attacking Israel, and Israel is not in NATO, NATO countries' aircrafts were deployed. Air defense. The air defense worked. Operated by Different Middle Eastern countries. These are also security guarantees. And, by the way, Israel has nuclear weapons.
So why do they need NATO when, in fact, they have more than NATO has? The American, British, and French aviation stepped in. There was ADA. I don't remember from Jordan. Listen, thousands of missiles were shot down that way. This is, this is, what is this? So it's a guarantee of safety. It's just that it's not called NATO. Is some Uncle Vova irritated by the word NATO?
There's a problem with the word? And I think he's simply irritated by people who are alive and living here.
If you believe this, it will be very difficult to negotiate. If you think that the president of a country is completely crazy, it is really hard to come to an agreement with him. You have to look at him as a serious person who loves his country and loves the people in his country. And he conducts, yes, destructive military actions.
Who are you talking about now?
Who loves his country? Putin. Do you think he doesn't love his country? No. No.
What is his country? He happened to consider Ukraine his country. What is his country? Explain it. Tomorrow he will say that it's America. No pity for the Chechens? Do they look like Russians? Do they speak Russian? Of course. Of course they learn in schools like anywhere there's been Russification. Who are the Chechens? A different people. Another faith? Other people. Another language.
A million. Eliminated. And eliminated how?
How did he kill them? With love? I know, fuck. By hugging. In Ukrainian, as we say, strangling by hugging. I love you so, so much. I love you so much that I want to kill you. That's his love. And that's not love. You're mistaken. He does not love his people. He loves his inner circle.
It's only a small part of the people. He doesn't love them. Why? I'll explain. You cannot send your people to another land to die knowing that they will die. Children, my daughter, my daughter, she is She is 20 years old.
For me, this is a child. She is already an adult, of course. But she is a child. The boys he sends are 18 years old. 18 years old. They are children. He sends them. It's not that fascists came to his land and he needs to defend it. He came to ours and he sent them. Chechnya, he sent them. Syria, he sent them. Africa, he sent them. Georgia, he sent them. Moldova, Transnistria, that was before him.
Fine, we can leave that aside. He has enough sins of his own. And, and then there's Ukraine, the largest part.
Seven, hundred, eighty thousand. 788,000 killed or wounded Russians.
He calls them all Russians. Even those who don't know how to speak Russian. On his territory of Russia, everything they've enslaved. Yes. Proud Varangians. So I wonder, is that love? What love is this? And for what? Does he love his people? No. Does he love his land? His country is bigger than America. How much land do you need? America is huge. America is simply an outstanding country.
Outstanding country. Russia is bigger. Well, just bigger. So, so ask yourself, does he love them? What is he doing? And what does he love? Do you think he's been everywhere? In his Russia? It's impossible to get around it. He hasn't been everywhere. He just hasn't.
Well, I believe that Donald Trump loves America. And I don't think he has been to every single American city.
No, no, no. I saw his rallies. So many rallies. No, no, let's be honest. Let's be honest. He had it and I saw it. And it's very difficult. He's not, I mean, he's not 18. Yes, but he's strong. And this is his will. Everywhere where the war is. I'm sure. I pray to God it never will be on your land, yes. And I'm sure that it will not be.
But I'm sure that if you have in some region the problems, how to say earthquake, hurricane, you have it all. Well, I'm sure that President Trump would be there. After one day, two or three days, I don't know the security of all these things, but he will be. Otherwise, how will people look at him? Yes, of course he will. Of course. The same about me. I'm not comparing myself with him.
I'm just, where it is difficult for people, I have to come. The question, the next question is very simple.
Region. Kursk region. The operation there.
Was Putin in Kursk during four months?
No. Listen, I have tremendous respect for you, admiration for many reasons, one of which is you stayed in Kiev. And another one is that you visit the front and you talk to the soldiers in the front and you talk to people all across Ukraine. Absolutely. Tremendous respect for that. And not enough people say...
I had a conversation with Tucker Carlson, for example, and I said that you're a hero for staying in Kiev. And he said, well, he just did a thing that every leader should do. But I think not enough leaders do the thing that every leader should do. So, tremendous respect. And I agree with you totally. Yes, a leader should go to the front of a war.
That said, America has waged wars all across the world. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq cost $9 trillion and killed over a million people. War is hell, and just because war is waged in terrible ways that it is does not mean the leader does not love their country. But I take your point.
I once again have a dream that even if there's hate, that you sit down with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and you find a way to peace. Let me ask you a question.
What do you think? Will there ever be a day when the Ukrainian people forgive the Russian people and both peoples will travel back and forth again and marry each other, rekindle and form friendships? Will there be such a time in the future?
I think history has long answered this question. I don't know how it will be for us. It will be in the future. Without a doubt, history has shown this time.
And again, after every devastating war, one generation, one country recognizes that it is, was an aggressor, And it comes to realize this is impossible to forgive.
This is precisely the kind of education they've had in Germany for many years. Even though these children had nothing to do with it, it was their grandfathers who participated and not all of them were participants. of Nazi Germany's war against, essentially against the world. Yes. And against life. And therefore, they're still apologizing. Apologizing is not easy.
They know that they were the aggressors. They were guilty. They do not look for compromise in history. Compromise in itself buys time. And they understand this. There are convicted murderers condemned both historically and by their own people. Reparations have been paid. And security guarantees have been established by the way, and all this is done.
And when all this is done and recognized, in any case, people develop relations with each other. That's clear, but it can only happen the way it always has, always has in history. Russia will have to apologize. It will. This will happen because they are guilty. They are guilty. And as I told you, the guilty are different.
Both those who participated and those who remain silent because silence is also about participating, in my opinion.
Can I ask about Donald Trump?
We've already mentioned him a lot, but let's focus there.
What do you admire, what do you respect about Donald Trump? And also maybe why do you think he won overwhelmingly the election in 2024, that American people chose him?
He was stronger. He was much more stronger than Kamala Harris, Biden first, and then Kamala Harris, yes? He showed that he can intellectually and physically win. It was an important point to show that if you want to have a strong country, you have to be strong. And he was strong. And this number of rallies, what I said, is not a simple thing. He showed that he can. He is strong.
So he doesn't have any questions with his, I mean, this age and et cetera, nothing. He is young. He is young here and his brains work. So I think it's important, very important. And of course, a lot of interior questions. I understand the prices and et cetera, economic questions and the questions of, you have the questions with other things.
Immigration, yeah.
A lot of things. I understand. So maybe he answered on those questions which people had. One of the questions... That he will finish the war.
That he will finish the war.
Yeah. For me, this is the main question. But I said that for him, he's the president of the United States. For him, his priority is his questions in the United States. And I understand and I respect it. But the second he was speaking about the world, yes, he said that he will finish the war. And I hope very much. Because... I think that our people really support his idea.
And that's why I said it is for me. It's very, very important to have enough people around him who will have connections with him with the right things. For me, the truth is very right things. What's going on really on the battlefield? What's going on really with Putin and Russia, what he really wants, and that is just to have it.
You know, before any decision, you have to be at the same level of information. And we need, really, we need him to know everything from us, from you, from people in Ukraine, from people around who are really afraid Afraid that Putin doesn't want to stop the war. Afraid that he will come back with his aggression.
So first of all, I should mention that our conversation today will be translated and dubbed into Ukrainian, English, Russian, other languages, Spanish. So you're in your voice. So there are Great guys originally from Poland. It's a company called Eleven Labs. They've trained an AI. Artificial intelligence sounds truly remarkable in your voice.
You have the freedom to speak in any language you choose, but no matter what, you will always find yourself returning to speaking in Ukrainian. That is, when you talk about Donald Trump, you can do it in Ukrainian or Russian.
Everybody understands.
Everybody understands.
But you said that there's some things about the war that maybe Americans don't understand. So we talked about Putin. We talked about the security guarantees, but the reality of war, what's happening on the ground, what do you think that people should understand?
First of all, they have to understand the idea of Putin's war. It is very important for him. I consider this process.
I think it is very important for him not to give Ukraine independence.
To prevent Ukraine from developing as an independent country, for him, influence, influence on Ukraine cannot be lost. And for him it is, you know, like, I think for him, this is such a goal. And this last mile, and certainly for him, the last mile and of his...
of his political life. And I think that this is the goal for him.
The second story, I do not want to talk about these banalities that he wants to return all the territories of the Soviet Union, influence over them. He does this little by little. I just don't want to, people need to know details. For example, Georgia, which was headed towards the EU and NATO, completely turns towards Russia, regardless of
Of the fact that they have frozen conflicts, they have in Abkhazia what we have with Donbass, which is controlled by militant rebels. Abkhazia is not developing. It's just a part, a very beautiful part of Georgia that has died. And if you have the opportunity, then go there someday. You will understand it simply died because Putin wanted to.
He wanted not to allow them to develop because a frozen conflict means that you will not be accepted. in the EU and certainly will not be accepted into NATO. Because right now, yes, they do not take you because of a frozen conflict. And this is what Putin did. It's very important for him not to lose this influence. That is, he turned back Georgia, young people, students, everyone leaves.
And this is a fact. Georgia is quite small. And they will leave. They want to live in Europe. They want to develop. Somebody in the United States, somebody in Europe, somebody in the EU, somebody in Britain. He will... He will now fight for the Moldovan parliament. This is his second step. You will see in April what happens. you will see, oh, he will start turning Moldova away, away from Europe.
Although they want to go there, he does not care. There will be a pro-Russian party and they will do something with the current president because she has won the elections. She is pro-European, but he will turn this back. The next steps are completely clear. He will do everything wherever he has lost influence, where there was influence, influence of the Soviet Union.
He'll turn it back as much as possible. And we understand at what price. You have seen Syria You saw these tortures, what we saw in Bucha, what we saw everywhere we came and where our territories were occupied. In Syria, the same happened. There were a thousand people there. And you have seen it. Scientists were found. Doctors were found.
It is clear that any people are capable of generating their own opinion. Show their skills. Develop society. everyone who can express an opinion, everyone who can shape the independence and maturity of society, such people are not needed. And he wants this in Ukraine. And therefore, everyone should understand that Ukraine is like a large wall.
From that, Europe, and if God willing, President Trump does not withdraw from NATO. Because again, I believe that this is the biggest risk. I think two steps.
Two steps that Putin would like to see is a weak NATO.
And this without Trump and a weak Ukraine, which cannot survive on the battlefield, simply cannot survive and prevent me from building a strong relationship I think these two steps, leaving NATO and Ukraine's weakness, will lead to a large-scale war. which Putin will wage on all the territories of that Europe, post-Soviet Europe.
I mean, Soviet Europe, not post-Soviet, but post-World War II period. That is Soviet Europe, Soviet-era Europe, in order to completely control everything there. This is what he will do. And besides this, This will happen in any case, even if the U.S. is thinking about leaving NATO. This war will affect the United States because North Korea is the first sign.
North Korean skills, North Korean knowledge, which they are now gaining from this war. These include mastering new technologies, large-scale drones, missiles, how it works, the kind of technological war we have today, cyber war, etc. All these skills Korea will bring home and scale up in that region. And this will be a risk. For the Pacific region. Security first and foremost.
For Japan and for South Korea. They will face these risks 100%. And it will be clear that Taiwan will also have to face them.
Without this, it is impossible. This is already happening.
This is already happening. Therefore, I think that President Trump has all power to stop Putin and give Ukraine strong security guarantees.
We've been talking for two hours at the pause. You want to take the break?
Yeah, we will make a pause.
We can have coffee, right? Coffee? Let's do it. Yeah. And give the interpreter.
He's struggling. Some water.
Some water.
We keep switching languages.
Like a dragon, you know? Three heads, three translators.
So one of the difficult decisions you had to make when the war began is to enact martial law. So when you won the presidency, you were the warrior for freedom. In fact, this war is for freedom, for freedom of the individual, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom. But a lot of freedoms had to be curtailed, sacrificed in this fight because there's so much focus on the war.
Do you see the tension, do you feel the tension of that, the sacrifice that had to be made in democracy, in freedom, in fighting this war.
In any case, this war is for our freedom. Generally speaking, to be honest, When you understand, over time, when the war passes, you understand that your main values are at home. This is your home, your children, your love. God willing, parents are alive. And if not alive, then their memory visiting their grave. Choosing how to work, how much, preferably choosing where to work.
All this is freedom. Freedoms are not just a desire. They are an opportunity. In any case, you are right because war is a limitation of opportunities. In any case, you fight for these opportunities. Your parents... your parents and God gave you life, right? You fight for your life, your life. But we need to understand that first there is a war and then martial law is introduced.
martial law is not introduced because someone wanted to. You say, this is not Pinochet, this is not Pinochet, and so on. This is a completely different story. An aggressor came, and according to your legislation, if the border is violated, if there is armed aggression, you have all this written down, long ago written out in legislation.
You introduce martial law, and the introduction of martial law everywhere, at all times, means, in any case, a restriction of opportunities. If opportunities are limited, rights and freedoms are restricted. Therefore, the war itself restricts rights and freedoms. Yes, and you can't do anything about it. We try, honestly, to balance as much as Possible.
I believe that the business sector works despite the difficulties of the war. And we do everything. Somewhere. You know, there, somewhere, to reduce some load. Unfortunately, we cannot reduce taxes. On the contrary, a military tax is used for war. You need to take money somewhere. This, by the way, is about the fact, the fact that the US gave us a lot and Europe too.
But compared to how much we needed for the war, this is not all. As for military salaries, you know, you know that we could not pay the salaries of a million strong army. We could not pay it using the money from our partners. These are all expenses. This is all the money that the country and people
have accumulated you can't do anything i really want to reduce taxes i will tell you frankly i really want to well i think that the whole new tax system new deregulation new steps new reforms all this will be after the war although there is something to brag about this is proof and this
This is a document because if you want to get a candidacy for European Union, you must implement the appropriate number of reforms. We do everything. During the war, we voted for many reforms, including anti-corruption, banking reforms, land reforms, major reforms. We started a large privatization and the war did not stop us. Yes, it slowed down, but we went through a lot.
When do you think you will hold elections? Because for people who don't know, part of the martial law elections were suspended and they were delayed and delayed and delayed. And I think the next sort of plan is in February of 2025. But when do you think there will be presidential elections in Ukraine?
Elections were postponed once. They were not delayed, to be clear. Elections did not take place in 2024. That year, first of all, we need to understand the Constitution. They were scheduled to be held in the spring of 2024. Due to martial law, under the Constitution, you cannot do this. These are the presidential elections, the parliamentary elections.
did not take place in the fall of 2024, according to the Constitution. Yes, there are security things. There is the Constitution, but there are security things. That is, everyone in Ukraine understands that this cannot be done until the war is over or legislation needs to be changed. I believe that elections will take place immediately after the end of martial law. This is according to the law.
Or members of the parliament need to get together and change legislation, which will be very difficult to do because society is against it. Why is society against it? It is understandable why. Because we want elections that we want to trust. 8.5 million people went abroad. The infrastructure needs to be created for these millions of people to vote. Millions of people in the occupied territories.
I'm not even talking about the occupation of 2014. I'm talking about the occupation right now. What to do with these people? This is a difficult question.
And one of the most unfair ones is how to vote without having a million soldiers.
That is, it is impossible. We need to think about how to change the system if the elections are held in times of war, change the legislation, which should include changes to the voting system. To think about online voting. Everyone is afraid because of certain attacks, like cyber attacks. And so on. But we need to think about it. I really think that it's possible that we can end the war in 2025.
In January. Oh. We've already agreed on it.
I would very much like to. I would very much like to.
After the war?
And immediately. Yes, immediately. In the year of the end of the war. It's a fact. Why? Because when martial law ends, you can immediately vote in parliament to hold elections. And then everyone, everyone will vote because there are no restrictive measures. And after they vote, I think elections can be held in 90 days, something, something like that. Yes.
And this means that immediately after the end of the war, elections may take place in 90 days.
Are you running? For re-election?
Even I don't know, really. I don't know.
I don't know. It is a very difficult question. It depends on how this war will finish. It depends on what people will want. Mostly, it depends on people. First of all, and of course, my family.
We had no time to speak about it with my family. And of course, didn't have a chance because we don't think about it now. I mean, it's something, you know. There are a lot of, some, not a lot of, but enough voices in Ukraine from politicians, opposition, and etc., about this, I guess. But we don't think really seriously, didn't think seriously with my family about it. So this is war.
I mean, how to think about what will be after? It's very difficult, really very difficult.
If we look at the field of candidates, maybe you can give your opinion about the set of ideas you see out there, including your own, about the future of Ukraine. As I understand, the candidates include Poroshenko, Zaluzhny, Estovich, Budanov, Klitschko, and many others. This is the internet speaking to me. What do you think of the space of ideas that these candidates represent?
You know, I think there can be even a bigger number of candidates. Yeah, I don't really know what will be. They have rights to participate if they want to. Yes, if they really want to and can, they can go and do what they want, honestly. Most important is what are they doing now?
I think that all these people are the famous Ukrainian people and it's important for them to do everything they can today, not begin any election campaign. I think this what can divide our people to have the elections, you know, during the war. I mean, this make steps. speak about elections a lot, you know, make a big mess about it. I think this is not right.
That's why I'm not agreeing with some of these people. But they can and I think that they can and maybe some of them will. And it's okay. It's normal. It's very normal. Our system differs from the system in the United States. You have two parties and the parties decide who will be the leader. And in Ukraine, everybody can participate. Let them.
You think you're going to win the debate? You versus Zaluzhny, Poroshenko, or Istovich, and you decide to run. Do you think you're going to win the debate? Or are you, again, focused on the war?
Oh, I'm really focusing on the war. I understand. I think the most difficult... Debate is what will be brought to the table. And we spoke about it. It will be during the war. How to finish the war. I think that is my goal because it will be one of my most complicated debates. And for any president who is in a war, of course. But I think this is my goal to win those debates.
And the other things are not for today.
As I said, the dream I have is It's a historic opportunity to make peace. to make lasting peace, soon. So I'm glad you're focused on that. Let me ask a question about, that a lot of people in the United States think about, and I care a lot about the future of Ukraine, is corruption. This is something you have cared a lot about for a long time.
You won the presidency in 2019, in big part, your message of fighting corruption. But there's a lot of accusations that during war, I mentioned $9 trillion in the United States, war breeds corruption. So can you speak to that, how you have been fighting corruption? And can you respond to the accusations that has been corruption in Ukraine?
You know, it's very simple. First of all, We really have a very sophisticated anti-corruption system. Sophisticated not in the sense that it's difficult to understand, but in that it really consists of many elements. It's the most sophisticated in all of Europe. This is another requirement of the European Union. It was a requirement for Ukraine. And for many years, Ukraine was not trusted.
I want to tell you that under me, we all voted for bills. All the anti-corruption reforms, well, almost all reforms and all anti-corruption bodies today are independent. They work as requested. I still believe that they are not perfect yet. There are many issues. There is a judicial system, but also a judicial reform that our partners, the United States plus the EU, demanded from us.
This is all written out. This is written out in specific laws, in specific decrees, in specific decisions. We did this. We've done 99% of this. If something has not been done, it means that it is on the way. But in principle, all this exists and there is no such system as we have in Europe. To say that we do not have corruption would be lying. We just talk about it openly.
We are genuinely fighting against it. Look, we have sitting in our prison, Ihor Kolomoisky. who is the most influential Ukrainian oligarch since independence. And no one could do anything about him. The United States of America wanted to have Kolomoisky, and they went to great lengths because of money laundering, etc.
There are criminal cases in the United States, I think in Delaware, something like that. Neither Europe could do anything about it. That is, we did a lot with oligarchs. Russian oligarchs, sanctions were imposed. They were thrown out. Some of them fled the state, but they are all... They are all under sanctions.
We exchanged some of them for our soldiers, such as Medvedchuk, to whose daughter Putin is godfather. That is, we fought against the strongest influential oligarchs. which are and were in Ukraine, and we eliminated a lot of corruption. Of course, corruption exists in everyday life. It exists, but institutionally, I am sure that Ukraine will overcome all this.
This takes a little time, I would say honestly, that, listen, what we call corruption, And in some state of the world, it's called lobbyism. But this does not mean that there is no corruption there. Let's take the aid you mentioned during the war. First of all, we have no money. We have no money except for the war. We received weapons from the United States of America, from Europe.
If we take, for example, money from the United States of America, during all this time of the war, around $177 billion have been voted for or decided upon. $177 billion. Let's be honest. We have not received half of this money. The second point, which is very important just as an example, is a corruption. The first question, who's corruption? This is the second.
Here is just one small example for you. When the United States began to transfer us weapons, it was American money, but American weapons. Money for these weapons. I had... As a president, I had cargo jets. Not in Ukraine because of the war, we moved them very quickly to Europe. We had cargo. We have good cargo fleet. Very good. Because of Antonov.
So I asked American side to grant me the opportunity because our jets are at another, yeah, airfield. And I asked America to give me the opportunity to use our jets for transfer. Not to pay a lot. To whom? To your companies. To American companies. No, I didn't get this opportunity. My jets stayed put. And the United States jets, cargo jets, moved these weapons.
But everywhere you have to spend money. So we could get more weapons, but we have to pay for this very expensive fleet.
My question, is this corruption or not? Or lobbyism? What is it?
You mean corruption on the part of the U.S. companies?
Yes, making such decisions.
Yes, I got it.
The lobbying for such decisions involves some companies that make these decisions. But I can't be open about it and I couldn't speak loudly about it. I didn't want, nor did I intend to cause any scandals to arise because otherwise you can freeze the support and that's it. And that's why when we talk about corruption, we must ask who is involved.
If we had 177 and if we get the half, where is the half? If you will find the second half, you will find corruption.
There is a perception of corruption. People like Donald Trump and Elon Musk really care about fighting corruption. What can you say to them to gain their trust that the money is going towards this fight for freedom, towards the war effort?
In most cases, we did not receive money, we received weapons. And where we saw risks that something could be a weapon, we would slap everyone on the wrist. And believe me, this is not only about Ukraine. On the supply chain, Everywhere, there are some or other people and companies who want to make money because everyone makes money on the war. We did not profit from the war.
If we found someone, believe me, we slapped everyone on the wrist. And we did that. We did that. And we will continue to do so because to this day, When someone says that Ukraine was selling weapons, and by the way, Russia was the one pushing this narrative, we always responded. Our soldiers would kill such people with their own hands, without any trial.
Do you honestly think anyone could steal weapons by the truckload when we ourselves don't have enough on the front lines? And yet, we have to provide proof to defend ourselves. Because when there's an abundance of such misinformation, distrust starts to grow. And you're right, people listen to various media outlets, see this, and lose faith in you. In the end, you lose trust.
And with it, you lose support. Therefore, believe me, we are fighting more against disinformation than against particular cases. Although I still emphasize once again, at the everyday level, such things are still important. We catch these people and we fight them.
I mentioned Elon Musk. I would be interested to hear what you think of him, why you respect him as a person, as an engineer, as an innovator, as a businessman. I would just like to hear from you, what do you think about Elon Musk?
First of all, I had a conversation with him at the beginning of the war. I talked with him. I respect him, first and foremost. I respect the self-made man, right? In English, I love such people. You know, no one and nothing fell into their lap, but the man did something, did it all himself. I worked myself, created a big production company.
And I know what it means to make money, to make money, to select talented people, to impart knowledge to them, to invest money and to create something, something important for certain people, you know. And I'm not comparing myself to Musk. He just, well, the man is a great leader of innovations in the world. And I believe that such people move the world forward.
Therefore, I respect the result of his work. And we see this result. And for me, it has always been important that your result can be used. That these are not words, but facts. Let's take the war. We are very grateful for Starlink. It has helped. We used it after Russian missile attacks on the energy infrastructure. There were problems with the internet, et cetera, with connection.
We used Starlink both at the front and in kindergartens. It was used in schools. It helped children. We used it in various infrastructure and it helped us very much. And I would very much like Elon to be on our side as much as possible to support us. And yes, I am grateful to him for Starlink. Truly I am. First of all, so that our guys have a connection and children too.
And I am really, I am really grateful to him for that. I think we need, I would like him to come to Ukraine to talk to people here and to look around and so on.
Has Elon visited Kiev or Ukraine yet?
No.
I hope the Kiev airport will open soon. Then it will, it will be easier to fly in.
Yes, I am... I am looking forward to it. Maybe we will open it, but only. And you must understand, if the war is over, there must be sustainable peace and air defense systems, to be honest. And we must ensure that they are long-lasting and effective. Let's take the airport, for example, and let's focus on the airport in Rzeszów.
which you know very well as it is handling important cargo for Ukraine in Poland, and there are Patriot systems there? Because everyone understands what the risk is. Well, Russia is a risk, and therefore we need air defense systems. And today, today take, for example, the air defense system of one city or another that is being shelled, and move it, move it to the airport.
Well, that would be dishonest. People are more important than planes. But there will be a moment, and Trump, by the way, I think that the war will end, and President Trump may be the first leader to travel here by airplane. I think it would be symbolic by airplane.
Again, January 25th, around that date, right? Flying in, meeting the Air Force One. That would be cool. Elon Musk. I will meet you there for the second time, too, on the plane. With pleasure. And you, by the way, before I forget, let me ask, Are you coming on January 20th for President Trump's inauguration?
I would like to, of course. I will be considering.
What is happening then in the war? Because there are moments of difficulties, escalation, many missiles, etc. But honestly, well, I can't. I can't come, especially during the war, unless President Trump invites me personally.
I'm not sure it's proper to come because I know that in general leaders are, for some reason, not usually invited to the inauguration of presidents of the United States of America. Well, and I know that there are leaders who can simply come, want to come, and will come. Yeah, I know. And I know the temperament of some of these people. They can come at their discretion.
This is very, very difficult for me. I am the kind of person that cannot come without an invitation. This is Putin. We did not invite him. He came to us, so to say. And me? I can't do that.
No. But didn't he publicly say that? It would be great if you came to the inauguration. Or you mean, did he invite it officially?
No, wait. Look, look, look. Listen, I am against any bureaucracy. I get rid of it. As much as I can. But, well... You know, there are some complexities involving security. I decide and I fly. And the United States of America officially provides security. Not that I need this, mind you. I do not ask for helicopters to fly around and protect me. But they will simply do it themselves.
The security service itself. They had to do it. I don't want it. And sometimes I don't need it. And I'm asking them. It was, for example, before the war, I think, yes, it was before the war. I just, I had a meeting, yes, with President Trump. It was in 2019. I just wanted to go for a run early in the morning because I really wanted to exercise.
And they, those tall bodyguards, a lot of them, they decided to join me, but I couldn't really do it because they were in suits. And I was in sportswear. I said, no, I can't. It's always funny. I'm not, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to disturb anybody and cause anyone problems with me. And that's why if he will invite me, I will come.
I thought he invited you. Yeah? Yeah, I thought he publicly invited you. But okay, I hope to see you there. I think they had to. Okay.
To do some of their steps. I don't know, but... Yeah, the stamp was missing. Yeah, but with pleasure with my wife, of course, and I think it's important. It's important.
All right, let's get back to a serious question. Sometimes they say it in America, this question of who is really in power. So let me ask, is someone controlling you? For example, oligarchs, American politicians, Yermak. Yermak. I wanted to bring this up because I have been here in Ukraine twice since the invasion of 2022.
And one of the things I've learned, well, is that actually nobody controls you. And this is one of your strengths as a president, as a person, that oligarchs And other rich and powerful people like that cannot control you. Can you explain why that is, how you see it?
I think, and it is indeed true, that I'm generally difficult to deal with. I am an ambitious person. I can't submit to anyone. I can live by rules, by laws. I believe that this is the only thing that can control any person today. These are the rules and laws of the society or state where you live. And I believe that this is the most important thing. There's no person who could control me.
As I once told President Trump, when we had a meeting, by the way, journalists asked if Trump influenced me during the phone call. I told him, I told the journalist the truth then. Who can influence me? Only my, my boy, my son. This is a fact. When he calls asking for something, well, then I lift up my arms. Yes, and I cannot do anything about it because children are children.
I have so little time with them. And therefore, when there are these moments, they are precious and important to me. I am ready to do anything. Also, probably my parents, They are an authority for me. Beyond that, I view it more as a system. No one can control the president.
Therefore, we have oligarchs who either fled or are in prison because oligarchs usually control cash flows and people and influence politics. And we have concrete examples with sentences. They are not just under house arrest. Not just that, there are some judgments under which their assets were frozen or sanctions were imposed. There are specific people who are behind bars.
I think this is the answer regarding the influence. Would they like to influence me in the same way as any president of Ukraine? Because finance and cash flows always influence politics. Well, at least they want to do this. This is regarding the influence. And other people on the vertical, they... perform tasks as my managers. Andriy, you mentioned, is one of those managers.
Well, I am glad that I have such people. Well, probably there is nothing else to add here.
I will just say that your team that I spoke with is an excellent team, excellent people. Thank you. Okay, one last question. The future of Ukraine. If you look 5, 10, 20 years into the future, what can help Ukraine flourish economically, culturally, politically in the future?
Digital, it's very important. Digitalization of all the process. We began this work. We have special ministry of digital transformation. Yeah. So this is very good. And we also have our DIA. This is the name for all of these services. Yeah. So I think that is the most important. This is, again, this is not only convenient that we'll cancel all the NE services,
possibilities for future corruption because you don't have any you know you don't have any personal connections with people in the government or elsewhere so you're just on your phone or any other device that's it and i think we are doing very well we are the best in europe all of europe recognizes it some countries of the african union asked us to provide this, the same service.
And we will do it after the war immediately. And I think that we can bring money to Ukraine from this. And I think what we also need, we need a tax reform. I think it will be very important for the businesses to return. A lot of support will come, I think, from USA Business Investment, not as direct aid to us, just to the private sector and resources.
And I mentioned this to President Trump and to some European leaders who are our key strategic partners that we'll be happy, especially with the Americans, we'll be happy to sign these contracts and engage in joint investments in many areas. And I think we can develop oil, gas, green energy, including solar power. And we already have the resources. We can invest money into this.
We have oil reserves in the Black Sea that we can exploit. and we need your expertise and the investment of your companies. We have gold and uranium reserves, the largest in Europe, by the way, which is also very important. For example, Russia has pushed France out of Africa. They urgently need uranium, which we have, so we are ready to open up for investments. And
This will give us, of course, opportunities, jobs for people, revenue. I don't want cheap labor, honestly. What I truly want, especially after the war, to open up for those people who can really contribute and earn. Yes. And give a reason to the 8 million people to come back. Yes. It's so important. And they will come and we will recover and rebuild Ukraine. We will be very open to companies.
And of course, we will welcome our people back. It's so important culturally. I think the most important thing is to remain open and not change our direction. Because culturally aligning with Russia, it's one idea, while aligning with Europe is another. Our people have chosen Europe. It's their choice. It's our choice, the choice of our nation. And I think it's very important.
But first you have to end the war.
Yes, you're right. And we will. We want peace, you know. I mean, just to make it clear, we want peace. Just what I always say. You have to come to Ukraine and see for yourself. And people will tell you, no, we can't forgive those murderers who took our lives. But we still want to make peace.
And honestly, I think that the highest approval rating of the president of the United States, of Trump, now is in Ukraine. People really believe that he can truly help bring peace. Now they have faith, faith that he can make it happen, that he can support Ukraine and he can stop Putin and that he will make sure Putin doesn't get everything he wants. This is very important.
And it's why we believe that we must not lose this opportunity.
I hope you find the path to peace. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for talking. Thank you for coming.
Yeah, you, you started. Thank you very much.
Thank you for listening to this conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. And now, let me answer some questions and try to reflect on and articulate some things I've been thinking about. If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfriedman.com slash AMA, or to contact me for whatever other reason, go to lexfriedman.com slash contact.
First, I got a bunch of questions about this, so let me chat about the topic of language and, let's say, the mechanics of multilingual conversation. Perhaps the details are interesting to some people. It also allows me to reflect back on the puzzle of it in this episode and what I can do better next time.
I already explained in the intro the symbolic, historic, and geopolitical complexity of the choice of language in the conversation with President Zelensky. As I said, the Russian language is one that the President speaks fluently and was his primary language for most of his life. I speak Russian fluently as well. It's the only common language we are both fluent in.
So any other combination of languages required an interpreter, including when I spoke English. He did need an interpreter when I spoke English. And, just like I was, was visibly encumbered and annoyed by the process of interpretation. This is why I tried to speak in Russian to the president instead of English, so that he can directly understand me without an interpreter.
I'm willing to take the hit for that, as I am for everything else. I'm not trying to protect myself. I'm trying to do whatever is best for the conversation, for understanding. Though it has been getting harder and harder to stay open, vulnerable, and raw in public.
while the swarms of chanting internet mobs stop by with their torches and their color-coded hats, flags, frogs, pronouns, and hashtags. Anyway, there is a lot of nuanced aspects of the conversational language that I would like to explain here. I'll try to be brief.
I can recommend a lot of books on this topic of language and communication that reveal just how amazing this technology of language is. For example, for a good overview, I recommend John McWhorter's books, and especially his lecture series for the great courses on language. There are several.
In the Story of Human Language series, he gives a great discussion on spoken language versus written language, And that spoken language often relaxes the rules of communication. It uses shorter packets of words, loads in a bunch of subtle cues and meanings, all of which, like I'm trying to describe, are lost when there's an interpreter in the loop.
Let me also describe some relevant characteristics of my peculiar language abilities, in quotes. I was never good at speaking. I listen, think, and understand better than I speak. For me, this is true for both English and Russian, but it is especially true for Russian.
The Russian language allows for much more room for wit, non-standard terms of phrase, metaphors, humor, rhyme, musicality, and, let's say, deforming of words that create a lot of room for creativity in how meaning and emotion are conveyed. You could do the same in English, but it's harder. I actually find that Brits are sometimes very good at this.
Like, one of my favorite humans to talk to is Douglas Murray. Setting the content of the conversation aside, the sheer linguistic brilliance and wit of dialogue with Douglas is a journey in itself. I think Christopher Hitchens had the same, and many others. Like I said, especially Brits.
Anyway, I'm able to detect and understand a lot of dynamism and humor in the Russian language, but I'm slow to generate it, in part because I just don't practice. I have very few Russian-speaking friends. Funny enough, most of them are Ukrainian, but they speak with me and each other in Russian. But of course, as I mentioned, this is slowly changing due to the war.
But I tried to speak to the president in Russian so he would avoid needing an interpreter as much as possible. One of the things I want to improve for next time is to make sure I get very good equipment for interpretation and arrange for an interpreter I trust to be exceptionally good for the dynamism and the endurance of a three-hour conversation in the style that I tried to do.
just to give you some behind-the-scenes details of the experience. So, equipment-wise, funny enough, it's not actually so trivial to set up wireless connections from us, the two people talking, to the interpreter, and then back to us, in a way that's super robust and has clean audio. The audio I had in my ear from the interpreter had a loud background noise.
So the whole time, I'm hearing a shh sound with the voice of the interpreter coming in very quietly. What a wonderful experience this whole life is, frankly. Plus, his translation was often incomplete, at least for me, so I had to put together those puzzle pieces continuously.
But again, it worked out, and hopefully our constant switching of languages and having a meta-discussion about language provided good insights as to the complexity of this fight for our nation's identity and sovereignty that Ukraine has gone through. Behind the scenes, off mic, on a personal level, President Zelensky was funny, thoughtful, and just a kind-hearted person.
And really, the whole team were just great people. It was an experience I'll never forget. After the conversation was recorded, the next challenge was to translate all of this and overdub it and do it super quickly. Like these words I'm speaking now have to be translated and dubbed into Ukrainian and Russian.
Eleven Labs were really helpful here, especially in bringing the president's voice to life in different languages. But even more than that, they're just an amazing team who inspired me and everyone involved. Please go support Eleven Labs. They are a great company and great people. The translation is separate from the text-to-speech and was done in part by AI and a lot by human.
This is where the fact that we had constant switching between three languages was a real challenge. So there are six transition mappings that have to be done. English to Ukrainian and Russian, Ukrainian to English and Russian, and then Russian to English and Ukrainian. continuously, sentence by sentence, sometimes word by word.
And each combination of language to language translation is best done by a person who specializes in that kind of mapping. So it was all a beautiful mess, all of it. And on top of all that, great translation is super hard. For example, I've read and listened to a lot of the CF scheme, both English and Russian, and studied the process of how these books are translated by various translators.
You can spend a week discussing how to translate a single important sentence well. Obviously, in this situation, we don't have weeks. We have hours for the whole thing. One of the things I regret is not putting enough time into the hiring and selecting great translators, from Russian and Ukrainian to English, especially. I think translation is an art.
So getting a good translator that works well with us is a process that needs more time and effort. I'll be doing that more this month. By the way, we have a small but amazing team. If you want to join us, go to lexfriedman.com slash hiring. If you're passionate, work hard, and everyone on the team loves working with you, then we'll do some epic stuff together. We'd love to work with you.
Like I said about Eleven Labs, there are few things as awesome in life as being able to work hard with an amazing team towards a mission all of us are passionate about. Anyway, I'll probably be doing a few more interviews in the Russian language. I do have a lingering goal of interviewing the mathematician Grigory Perlman, but there's also others.
I will also work on improving my whole pipeline, both equipment-wise and interpreter-wise in doing these conversations in other languages. Because there are many that I would like to do in languages I don't speak at all, like Chinese, Mandarin, or Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, French, German.
I see language as both a barrier for communication and a portal into understanding the spirit of a people connected by that language. It's all a weird and beautiful puzzle, and I'm just excited to get the chance to explore it. All right, I got a question on how I prepare for podcasts. So this has evolved and expanded more and more over time.
There are some podcasts that I prepare hundreds of hours for. In AI terms, let's say, first, I'm training a solid background model by consuming as much variety on the topic as possible. A lot of this comes down to picking high signal sources, whether it's blogs, books, podcasts, YouTube videos, X accounts, and so on.
For this conversation with President Zelensky, for example, since February 2022, I've spoken with hundreds of people on the ground. I've read Kindle or audiobook about 10 books fully, and then I skimmed about 20 more. I don't mean books about Zelensky, although he does appear in some of them. I mean books where this conversation was fully in the back of my mind as I'm reading the book.
For example, I read Red Famine by Anna Applebaum. It's about Hallamore. Does it directly relate to Zelensky? Not on the surface, no, but it sort of continues to weave the fabric of my understanding of our people, of the history of the region. but it's really important for me to read books from various perspectives.
And I'm always trying to calculate the bias under which the author operates and adjusting for that in my brain as I integrate the information. For example, Anne Applebaum's book, Gulag, is very different from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. The former is a rigorous, comprehensive historical account. The latter is a literary, psychological, and personal portrait of Soviet society.
Both, I think, are extremely valuable. On the bias front, for example, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shire is a good example. It is full of bias. But he was there, and to me, he has written probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest book on the Third Reich ever. But like I said, it has a lot of inaccuracies and biases. You can read about them online if you like.
But my job in this case, and in all cases, is to adjust based on my understanding of the author's biases and take the wisdom from the text where it could be found, and putting the inaccuracies aside into the proverbial dustbins of history. So as I'm reading, I'm writing down my thoughts as they come up, always digging for some deeper insight about human nature.
If I'm at my computer, I'll write it down in Google Doc. Sometimes use Notion or Obsidian. If I'm not at my computer, I'll use Google Keep. So, for example, if I'm listening to an audiobook and I'm running along the river, if a good idea comes to mind, I'll stop, think for a few seconds, and then do speech-to-text note in Google Keep. By the way, listening to audiobook at 1x speed. Old school.
And eventually I get a gigantic pile of thoughts and notes that I look over to refresh my memory. But for the most part, I just throw them out. It's a background model building process. By the way, LLMs are increasingly becoming useful here for organization purposes, but have not yet been useful, at least for me. And I do try a lot for insight extraction or insight generation purposes.
I should mention that my memory for specific facts, names, dates, quotes is terrible. What I remember well is high-level ideas. That's just how my brain works, for better or for worse. I realize that sometimes forgetting all of the details and the words needed to express them makes me sound simplistic and even unprepared. I'm not. But that's life. We have to accept our flaws and roll with them.
Aside from books, I also listen to a lot of podcasts and YouTube videos where people are talking about the topic. So for the President Zelensky episode, I listened probably to hundreds of hours of content from his supporters and from his critics from all sides. Again, I choose who to listen to based not on their perspective, but based on SNR, signal to noise ratio.
If I'm regularly getting insights from a person, I will continue listening to them, whether I agree or disagree. In the end, this turns out to be a lot of hours of prep, but to say that it's X hours per episode is not accurate because a lot of this preparation transfers from one guest to another, even when there's an insane level of variety in the guests. We're all humans, after all.
There is a thread that connects all of it together, somehow, if you look closely enough. For more technical guests in STEM fields, I'll read papers, a lot of papers, and also technical blog posts and technical tweet threads. This is a very different process. For AI or CS-related topics, I will run other people's code. I will write my own, implement stuff from scratch.
If it's a software company, I'll use their tools and software if relevant. But in the actual conversation, I constantly am searching for simple but profound insights at various levels of abstraction. Sometimes this means asking a trivial question in hopes of uncovering the non-trivial, counterintuitive but fundamental idea that opens the door to a whole new way of looking at the field.
And actually, every guest is their own puzzle. Like preparing for Rick Rubin was me listening to hundreds of songs he produced and even learning some on guitar, like Hurt by Johnny Cash. Preparing for the Cursor team episode meant, obviously, I had to use Cursor fully for several weeks, all of its features. So I switched completely from VSCO to Cursor.
For Paul Rosely, round two especially, I literally went deep into the jungle with Paul and almost died, fully taking the leap toward adventure with him. When it gets close to the conversation, I'll start working on the actual interview questions and notes. And there I'm asking myself, what am I personally curious about? Like I love podcasts. I'm a big fan of many, many podcasts.
And so I asked myself, what would I want this person to explain on a podcast? And maybe what aspect of their thought process or their humanity would I want to be surfaced or have the chance to be surfaced? In the actual conversation, I always try to put my ego aside completely and do whatever it takes to have a good conversation and serve the listener.
This means asking questions simply, trying to define terms and give context if needed, being open-minded, vulnerable, curious, and challenging the guests when needed. Despite the claims on the internet, I do ask a lot of challenging questions, including follow-ups, but always with empathy. I don't need to be right. I don't need to signal my moral or intellectual superiority to anyone.
I try to do the opposite, actually, because I want the guest to open up, and I trust the intelligence of the listener to see for themselves if the guest is full of shit or not, to detect the flaws and the strengths of how the guest thinks or who they are deep down.
A lot of times when interviewers grill the guest, it doesn't reveal much except give a dopamine hit to the echo chambers who hate the guest. As I said in the intro, I believe the line between good and evil does run through the heart of every man. The resulting conversations are sometimes a failure. Sometimes because they are too short. Sometimes because the chemistry was just not working.
Sometimes because I fucked it up. I try to take risks, give it everything I got, and enjoy the rollercoaster of it all, no matter what. And, as I said, I trust the listener to put it all together. And I trust the critic to tear it apart. And I love you all for it. All right, I got a bit of a fun question. It's a long one.
So Delian, cool name, wrote in saying he spotted me out in the wild and had a question about it. He wrote, True. Lex had his headphones earbuds on, listening to brown noise. Microsoft Surface propped up at eye level, Kinesis Advantage keyboard on the table. The use of Microsoft Windows is surprising. But it has been discussed in the past. True.
The ergonomics of the setup, Surface at eye level, means that Lex cares about his health. But the anomalously large Kinesis Advantage keyboard seems like such a burden to lug around airports, I cannot help but ask, Why is it that Lex is going through the hassle to bring this absolutely large keyboard with him as carry-on? It barely fits in a backpack.
Carrying it around must be necessary for Lex for some reason. I love the puzzle of this, that you're trying to think through this. The pain of lugging this tool around must be much smaller than the problem it solves for him? What problem does this keyboard solve? What makes it necessary at the airport? Productivity? Health? RSI? Good questions. Thank you, Delia. Great question. It made me smile.
So I thought I'd answer. I remember that day. There was something else about that day aside from the keyboard that I miss. So I am filled with a melancholy feeling that is appropriate for the holiday season. So let me try to set the melancholy feeling aside, answer a question about my computer setup when I'm traveling. So...
Whether I'm going to SF, Boston, Austin, London, or the front in Ukraine, I am always bringing the Kinesis keyboard. I don't have RSI or any other health issues of that kind that I'm aware of. Even though I've been programming, playing guitar, doing all kinds of combat sports my whole life, all of which put my hands and fingers in a lot of precarious positions and situations.
For that reason, and in general, ergonomics have never been a big concern for me. I can work on a crappy chair and table, sleep on the floor. It's all great. I'm happy with all of it.
So why Kinesis, which by the way is right here. I had to think about it.
Your question actually made me reflect. And I was hoping as I'm answering it, the truth will come out on many levels. So it is true that I'm more productive with it. I can type and correct mistakes very fast compared to a regular keyboard. both in natural language typing and in programming.
So fast enough, I think, where it feels like I can think freely without the physical bottlenecks and constraints of fingers moving. The bit rate in Neuralink parlance is high enough for me to not feel like there is cognitive friction of any kind. But the real answer, maybe the deeper, more honest answer is something else. I've used the Kinesis keyboard for over 20 years.
So maybe it's like one of those love stories where a guy and a girl love each other. And you try to quit because it doesn't quite work. But every time you leave, you ask yourself why. And then you realize that when you're together, your life is just full of simple joys. So what's the point of leaving? What's the point of life if not to keep close to you the things that bring you joy? Deleon.
Like this keyboard. It brings me joy. It's a bad metaphor. Over-anthropomorphized, perhaps. But I never promised a good one. I'm like a cheap motel on a road trip. Low quality is part of the charm. I do have some good motel stories for another time. This does not feel like the appropriate time.
All that said, to disagree with myself, I did use Emacs also for over 20 years and in a single week recently switched to VS Code and then Cursor and never looked back. So take my romantic nature with a grain of salt.
So yes, eventually I'll have to leave, but for now, you'll keep finding me on occasion in a random airport somewhere listening to brown noise, writing away the hours on this Kinesis keyboard. Now, if you see me without it, maybe it'll give you the same change of melancholy feeling I feel now in looking back to that airport in Detroit. Anyway, more about my travel setup, if anyone is curious.
I usually do travel with a Windows laptop, but I am mostly using Linux on it through WSL, Windows Subsystem for Linux. And in some cases, I'm dual booting Linux and Windows. I also need to be able to video edit, so on longer trips, I usually have a bigger laptop with a bigger screen, lots of memory, good CPU, good GPU. All of that helps with video editing on Adobe Premiere.
In general, I'm extremely minimalist, except for the few, let's call them sentimental things. Like all my podcast recording equipment fits into a small suitcase. I try to keep it as simple as possible. Thank you for the question and see you at the next airport. All right. I think it's time to bring things to a close.
I'd like to give a big thanks to you for giving me your time and your support over the years. It means the world. If you want to get in touch with me, go to lexfruman.com contact. There you can get feedback, ask questions, request guests for the podcast, or submit the Coffee with Lex form if you just want to chat with me over a cup of coffee.
I'll be traveling across the world a bunch this year, from Europe to South America and more, so it would be cool to do some small meetups and meet some interesting people. This has been a journey of a lifetime. Thank you for everything. On to the next adventure. I love you all.