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Zelenski explains the tension meeting with Trump in an interview in “Time”: “In that conversation, he was defending the dignity of Ukraine”

The Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, explained the Voltage meeting who was held at the end of February with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to the White House, in a large interview published on Tuesday in Time.

Following the advice of his trusted environment, Zelenski avoided speaking public about the meeting, in an attempt not to aggravate the diplomatic crisis. In the interview, the Ukrainian president reveals that he had made several gifts for his first meeting in the White House with the Republican leader. One of these was the Boxer Boxer Oleksandr Usyk, world weight champion. When he sat in the oval office, Zelenski put his belt on an auxiliary table on his right, with the intention of delivering him to Trump in front of journalists. However, when the meeting began in front of the cameras, the Ukrainian president delivered another gift to his guest: a folder with photographs of the prisoners of the Ukrainian war after his imprisonment in Russia. Some of them were very blooded, others showed signs of torture.

Those images, according to some American officials, have marked the moment when the meeting was twisted. But Zelenski insists that he did not regret his decision to show those photos. “(Trump) has a family, loved ones, children. He must hear the things he feels,” he says in the interview. “What I wanted to show were my values. But then the conversation was in another direction.”

“Why did the Ukrainians defend themselves at the beginning of this war for dignity,” says Zelenski. “We do not consider ourselves a sort of superpower, but the Ukrainians are very emotional and when it comes to our sense of dignity, freedom, democracy, our people get up and joined.” What they expected to see in the oval office, claims, was proof that the United States remains his ally. “But at that time there was the feeling of not being allied or not to adopt the position of an ally. In that conversation, he was defending the dignity of Ukraine.”