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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is not “afraid” of Donald Trump unlike other western leaders and dismissed reports that their last meeting in Washington was volatile, adding that he had good relations with the US president.
He also said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian that King Charles had helped build relations with Trump and described the British monarch as “very supportive” of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy was speaking after devastating Russian strikes on the country’s energy grid, leading to power cuts across most Ukrainian regions on Sunday, as engineers sought to restore the network. During the conversation the lights went out twice.
The Ukrainian president denied claims Trump had tossed maps of the battlefield aside in a stormy exchange in October at the White House, where he had arrived hoping to secure supplies of US Tomahawk cruise missiles. “He didn’t throw anything. I am sure,” Zelenskyy said. He described their relations as “normal”, “businesslike” and “constructive”.
According to the Financial Times, Trump had reportedly pressed Zelenskyy to accept Vladimir Putin’s maximalist terms for ending the war and said the Russian leader would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree. Zelenskyy said the meeting unfolded differently.
The visiting Ukrainian delegation set up three stands in front of Trump and his US team, laying out successive measures including weapons and economic sanctions that would “weaken” Moscow, he said. The goal was to reduce Russia’s ability to bomb Ukraine and to force Putin to the negotiating table.
Speaking at his presidential palace in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said “everyone in the world” was afraid of Trump. “That’s the truth,” he added. Asked if that applied to him as well, he said: “No … we are not enemies with America. We are friends. So why should we be afraid?”
He said: “Trump was elected by his people. We have to respect the choice made by the American people, just as I am elected by my people. The US is our strategic partner, for many years, perhaps even decades and centuries.” The two countries had deep shared values, in contrast with an “imperialist” and revisionist Russia, he suggested.
He also revealed King Charles had played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in encouraging the US president to support Ukraine more enthusiastically, following a tempestuous Oval Office meeting on camera in February when Trump publicly browbeat Zelenskyy and kicked him out of the White House.
During a state visit to the UK in September Trump held a one-on-one meeting with the king. “I don’t know all the details but I understand His Majesty sent some important signals to President Trump,” Zelenskyy said.
He said Trump respected the king and considered him to be “very important”, a genuine compliment not extended – he thought – to very “many people”. “His Majesty is very sensitive to our people. Maybe sensitive is not the right word. He’s very supportive,” Ukraine’s president said.
A few seconds after Zelenskyy sat down to talk to the Guardian, the interview was plunged into darkness when the electricity supply failed inside the Mariinskyi Palace in the heart of the Ukrainian capital.
In recent weeks Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s national power grid, leading to frequent blackouts in many towns and cities. Further attacks over the weekend have reduced the country’s energy generating capacity to “zero”, the state power firm Centrenergo said. Russian drones also hit two nuclear power stations deep in western Ukraine, and Kyiv has called on the UN’s nuclear watchdog to respond.
However, after a palace backup generator came on the lights flickered into action.
“These are our living conditions,” Zelenskyy said with a wry grin. “It’s normal. We have fluctuations with electricity in Kyiv, like everywhere else.” He said Putin was ordering “terrorist attacks” on Ukraine’s energy system, killing civilians and leaving them without power and water. “He can’t create tension within our society in any other way.”
Zelenskyy said he was working closely with international partners to protect Ukraine from nightly Russian drone swarms. So far, though, the UK and other allies have ruled out sending fighter jets to patrol the skies above the centre and west of the country – a longstanding Kyiv request. Zelenskyy said he wanted to order 27 Patriot air defence systems from US manufacturers. In the meantime, European states could lend Ukraine their existing Patriots, he said.
Asked if the EU and UK were doing enough, ahead of a freezing and dark winter, Zelenskyy replied: “It’s never enough. It’s enough when the war ends. And enough when Putin understands that he has to stop.” He said he enjoyed warm relations with Keir Starmer and had “constant contacts” with London. “It’s not about him [the prime minister] personally,” he said, on the issue of insufficient aid.
With Trump ruling out US military involvement, the French and UK governments have promised to send troops as part of an eventual peace settlement. Asked if he would like British soldiers to arrive sooner – to take up a defensive position on Ukraine’s border with Belarus, for example – Zelenskyy said: “Of course. We’ve been asking for many things including weapons and membership of the EU and Nato.”
But he said the question of a European armed presence in Ukraine while fighting rages had to be handled carefully. “Leaders are afraid of their societies. They don’t want to be involved in the war,” he said. It was ultimately “their choice” over whether to deploy troops. If he pushed too hard, there was a risk Kyiv could lose “financial and military support from our partners”.
In recent days Russian troops have captured most of the eastern city of Pokrovsk, after a long and bloody campaign. Zelenskyy said Moscow had thrown enormous forces into its operation – “170,000 men” – with the war at its fiercest and most brutal in Donetsk province, Putin’s main objective. “That’s the whole story. There is no [Russian] success there. And many casualties,” he said.
According to Zelenskyy, Moscow suffered 25,000 soldiers killed and wounded in October – a record.
He said the Kremlin was also waging a “hybrid war against Europe” and testing Nato’s red lines.
He argued it was entirely possible Russia would open a second front against another European country before the Ukraine war ended: “I believe so. He can do that. We must forget about the general European scepticism that Putin first wants to occupy Ukraine and then may go somewhere else. He can do both at the same time.”
Ukraine’s president linked the increase in malign activity across Europe – including a decoy drone incursion over Poland, and the later appearance of drones over airports in Copenhagen, Munich and Brussels – to Russia’s failure to progress significantly on the frontline since the initial months after the 2022 full-scale invasion. “Putin is in a dead-end situation in terms of real success. It’s more like a stalemate for him. That’s why these failures could lead him to look for other territories. It’s very difficult for us but we are at home and defending ourselves,” he said.
He described Russia as a large and aggressive country that needed a big external adversary to unite its different ethnic groups and regions. Putin saw the US and the west as the enemy, he said. “Befriending Russia is not a solution for America. In terms of values, Ukraine is much closer to the US than Russia.”
Commentators have claimed that Russia’s land-grab in Ukraine – and Trump’s threat earlier this year to acquire Greenland “one way or another” – means the post-1945 rules-based order is effectively over. Asked if he agreed, Zelenskyy said: “No one should impose anything on you from outside. I want to live in a world where I am simply respected. Not intimidated, not killed. I want to live in such a world.”
Zelenskyy has been Ukraine’s president since 2019 and has been leading his nation for almost four years of gruelling all-out war. How was he bearing up? “Well, I just love Ukraine. I can’t really find any reasons for it, you know. I think that people are held together by something greater than just logic. I love our people very much. It’s hard right now in Ukraine because of the war. But I want to be here.”
Just before his interview with the Guardian, Zelenskyy gave out awards in a ceremonial hall to a small group of Ukrainian soldiers, to mark national paratroopers’ day. They collected their medals one by one, briskly saluting the president, who is Ukraine’s commander-in-chief. Several were made heroes of Ukraine, the state’s highest honour.
Zelenskyy checked with his aides that his visitors had departed the palace building. They had. “Now we’ve finished we will reduce some electricity consumption here. We need to save it,” he said.
