On February 19, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a press conference to comment on Donald Trump’s statement about his alleged 4% trust in him.
Main points:
- On the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia: “No one is irritated. We are ready for anything.”
- On Trump’s 4% trust: “If someone wants to change me right now, then right now it will not work.” Zelensky added that this figure (4%) comes from Russia. The president said that in the next week or two, “we will ask all platforms to conduct a poll on trust in me, Trump, Tusk, Starmer, Erdogan. These figures will be published.
- On Trump’s easing of policy toward Russia: “All of this has no positive impact on Ukraine. They are bringing Putin out of isolation, which Putin and the Russians are very happy about. Yesterday there were signals that they were being treated as victims. This is something new.” Zelenskyy noted that while Ukraine is doing everything to call the war a war, Trump calls it a “violation of territorial integrity and conflict.”
- About the cost of the war: It cost Ukraine $320 billion. $120 billion was paid by Ukrainians, and another $200 billion was paid by the United States and Europe in the form of arms packages.
- On the agreement with the US on rare earths: “Ukraine is ready to sign an agreement on rare earth metals, but Kyiv needs security guarantees… The document (the agreement on security guarantees brought to Kyiv by Trump’s envoy) was unclear, it was clear only in one thing – we must give 50% of everything listed in the document.”
- On sanctions against Poroshenko: “Let the law enforcement agencies talk about the reasons. All this was discussed at the National Security and Defense Council, financial monitoring reported it all, there is an investigation, and sanctions were not imposed on Petro Poroshenko, do not subjectify the person who withdraws funds from our country, there is a list of people who were involved in this.”