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Zelenski explains the tense assembly with Trump in an interview in ‘Time’: “In that conversation, he was defending the dignity of Ukraine”

President Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, defined the tense assembly he held on the finish of February with the US president Donald Trump, on the White House, in an in depth interview printed Tuesday in Time.

Following the recommendation of its belief atmosphere, Zelenski has averted talking in public of the assembly, in an try to not irritate the diplomatic disaster. In the interview, the Ukrainian president reveals that he had taken a number of items for his first assembly within the White House with the Republican chief. One of them was the Oleksandr Usyk boxer belt, world boxing champion of heavyweights. When he took a seat within the Oval Office, Zelenski positioned his belt on an auxiliary desk to his proper, with the intention of delivering it to Trump in entrance of journalists. However, when the assembly started earlier than the cameras, President Ukraine delivered one other present to his host: a folder with images of Ukrainian battle prisoners after his captivity in Russia. Some of them had been very emaciated, others confirmed indicators of torture.

Those photos, in keeping with some American officers, marked the second when the assembly was twisted. But Zelenski insists that he has not regretted his resolution to indicate these pictures. “[Trump] It has family, loved ones, children. You have to feel the things anyone feels, “he says within the interview.” What I wanted to show were my values. But then the conversation was in another direction. ”

“Why did Ukrainians defend themselves initially of this battle? For dignity,” says Zelenski. “We don’t contemplate ourselves a sort of superpower, however the Ukrainians are very emotional, and on the subject of our sense of dignity, freedom, democracy, our individuals rises and joins.” What they expected to see in the Oval Office, he maintains, was the proof that the United States remains its ally. “But at the moment there was the sensation of not being allies, or not adopting the place of an ally. In that dialog, he was defending the dignity of Ukraine.”