He called Putin an “irrational” and “sometimes extremely emotional” politician.
According to Zelensky, “when it comes to Ukraine, he reacts too emotionally.”
Context:
Putin and Zelensky met in person only once – in December 2019 in Paris at the Normandy format leaders’ summit.
On April 20, 2021, Zelensky invited Putin to meet “anywhere in Donbass where there is a war”… Putin answered after two days and offered to meet in Moscow.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on April 27, Zelenskiy said that his meeting with Putin could go to the Vatican… “This is truly an ideal place for a dialogue about peace,” the Ukrainian president is convinced. Before that, Zelensky said that he “cares not about the venue, but about the content of the meeting”.
On June 30, Putin announced that so far sees no point in meeting with Zelensky, since “the key issues of the life of Ukraine are resolved not in Kiev, but in Washington, partly in Berlin and Paris.”
Zelensky, responding to Putin’s statement, called the words of the head of the Kremlin “a propaganda mantra that designed for domestic consumers in Russia itself “.
Putin said that considers Ukrainians and Russians “one people”, and therefore Ukraine was not included in list of “unfriendly countries” in the Russian Federation… In response, Zelensky said that Ukrainians and Russians have a lot in common, but they are not one people.
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