Instead, incredibly, he discovered it while watching the comic the moment he announced it live at a New Year’s Eve variety show he presented in 2018, a resolution of historic proportions that changed life.
ZELENSKYY, FIRST LADY TALKS TO STONER MORGAN ABOUT THE COST OF WAR ON HER MARRIAGE IN A CANDID INTERVIEW
“Did you forget to tell your wife that you were running for president!?”I exclaimed in disbelief, while Zelenskyy smiled shyly. ” But what did you have in mind?”
“It’s a very complicated resolution for our circle of relatives,” he said. “I knew I would hit them, it would be a challenging resolution, it’s not a joke. These are serious things. My circle of relatives is not in a position to let me go. . . “
“He understood that I probably wouldn’t have liked this idea,” Zelenska interrupted, “and that he would take very complicated negotiations with me. That’s probably why each and every day thought that THIS is the day, that THIS is the time. “, I tell you. But he kept postponing it. And then it was on TV, I saw his New Year’s speech and found out he was running. “
It’s time for him to atone for his marital failure.
“Mr. President, this is an opportunity for you to tell your wife. . . ,” I suggested.
So he did.
“Okay, I’m sorry!” he said to Zelenska, and they both laughed out loud.
It’s a very rare moment of lightness for a couple who were widely praised for supporting the morale of devastated other Ukrainians in their darkest hours.
They were sitting across from me in an old government building, for their first foreign television interview together.
And they couldn’t hide their excitement of seeing others after a prolonged era in which they had only swindled a few moments, holding hands like the best school lovers they were when they met 26 years ago.
“Is it like a TV date?” I joked with Zelenska.
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY CONTINUES TO DEFY FIVE MONTHS IN THE INVASION: “EVEN THE OCCUPIERS ADMIT THAT WE WILL WIN”
“Yes!” she replied, “Thank you for this televised appointment! Volodymyr lives in his workplace. I’m with the kids, but we’re somewhere else. But all Ukrainians are in this situation: too many other people are separated and we are all waiting and waiting. “for a general life: to reunite and lead a general life as other people live. “
Zelenskyy agreed: “This interview is one of the smart opportunities for us to see each other. This is very important to us. As you know, we are all human beings and we will have to be strong. Sometimes we need to have someone close to us and that’s what you miss in those moments. Yes, I miss my children, I miss my wife. It’s to get used to. Everything else you can get used to. “
A crisis of this magnitude, with all the myriad tensions that come with it, can end any relationship, even with the Zelenskys.
“I agree with the theory that marriage becomes more potent with challenges,” Zelenska said. “I think in our case it will be the same. We are more interested in others. That’s why I hope this challenge can bring us closer together. “
Then she to her husband and asked, “What do you think?”
“My would be no different,” Zelenskyy replied.
Zelenska shook her head. ” You have your own opinion about it!”
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR: WHITE HOUSE CONTINUES TO HELP “FACILITATE” ZELENSKYY’S PROTECTION
He smiled. ” When you speak, your opinion takes precedence. What I would say is that I have no other experience. I only have one wife and I am happy. I have a wife, a love and a family. I never feel like there was anything wrong with us in or in our relationship. Or maybe you feel dissatisfied with me?”
“Not with you,” she replied, “but with you, I am very unhappy. “
“That’s why I can’t make big changes,” he said. War strengthens our relations, that’s for sure. “
“Do we manage?” Zelenska suggested.
“Yes, but managing is not the right word. We are in love with others. Okay?”
“Okay,” she smiled.
Zelenska is a radiantly charming woman, which led me to ask her husband if he felt like he was “hitting over his weight. “
Zelenskyy seemed puzzled, until an assistant clarified the meaning of the English sentence and replied, “I think I’m very lucky with my wife, my family, and my children. “
He then showed a story he had heard that he and two of his friends had proposed to their friends, adding Olena, at the same time, and they got married for 3 consecutive weekends.
“True!” he smiled.
Zelenska laughed as she recalled the mass marriage agreement. “I don’t forget 3 of you (the guys) saying, ‘Let’s do it’ and everything will be fine, and we agreed. “
UKRAINIAN FIRST LADY OLENA ZELENSKA ORGANIZES SUMMIT MODERATED BY PIERS MORGAN
She had come to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, five days earlier at Zelenska’s invitation to co-sponsor her first gentlemen’s summit, which featured moving speeches of solidarity from many of the world’s toughest and most prominent people, from U. S. First Lady Jill Biden to David Beckham and Richard Gere.
This is not what many other people are taking right now.
In fact, millions of terrified Ukrainians have fled their country to escape Vladimir Putin’s missiles and murderous thugs since the illegal Russian invasion months ago.
It’s also a simple journey.
My vacation included a three-hour flight from London to a city in Poland, then a 90-minute drive to an exercise station near the Polish border, where I conducted the special overnight presidential exercise that all world leaders like Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron have been forced to use since civilian air was banned over the country. and arrived in Kyiv 11 hours later.
It’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security.
I felt comfortable with the exercise until a flight attendant suddenly gave the impression of urgently lowering the window blinds of my cabin. “We don’t need the Russians to see the lights,” he said in an unbiased tone.
UKRAINIAN FIRST LADY OLENA ZELENSKA ASKS CONGRESS FOR AIR DEFENSE SYSTEMS
She had an explanation for why she was afraid: many trains were attacked in this war and dozens of her colleagues on the rail network were killed.
Downtown Kyiv seemed relatively general with department stores and open and local cafes filling the streets, albeit amid an abundant military presence, but then I heard the sirens of airstrikes occurring several times a day and it was a disturbing reality. Ukraine is still a war zone and no one is Russia’s long-range cruise missiles.
Before interviewing Zelenskyy, I spent time with other people with deep ties to this war, and added the Klitschko brothers, whether former heavyweight boxing world champions, who are now fighting for their country’s lifestyle, Wladimir on the front line and Vitali as mayor of Kyiv.
The stories were horrific and heartbreaking, and constitute a small component of the anguish that so many Ukrainians have endured.
But their determination is strong, their resilience extraordinary, and in their leader, Zelenskyy, they have a modern Winston Churchill who unites them to challenge modern Nazis.
The comparison is fitting because either man had tiny powers, about five feet 7 inches, and possessed fierce intelligence and a sharp mind, a malicious determination, a determined refusal to surrender, and the ability to motivate entire nations with extremely eloquent rhetoric.
As I walked with Zelenskyy outdoors before the interview began, I told him why I thought he was Churchillian.
RUSSIAN FORCES ARE BLOCKADED WITH THE HELP OF THE US HIMARS. U. S. , UKRAINIAN DEFENSE OFFICIAL SAYS SOLDIERS STILL DON’T HAVE WEAPONS
“My grandmother was 19 when World War II started,” I said, “and she was talking about how the circle of relatives used to sit around the radio, pay attention to Winston’s speeches, and actually encourage them to believe they would win. “Hitler, opposed to all of you, did the same with Ukrainians through television and social media.
“Thank you,” he said, “but I compare myself to Churchill. “
Zelenskyy is the No. 1 target of the Russians and his No. 2 family, and there have been normal plots in his cherished life as ruthless Putin tries to silence the guy leading the resistance.
“It’s an unpleasant feeling,” admitted Zelenska. No I want to think they want to do that to our family. I try to push back those brain types. You can see what they have done to civilians and what they are doing now, anywhere in our control. I don’t understand what they have in their brains, and we would possibly be in danger. I don’t want to let brain types go deep into my brain because I might be scared, and that’s not what we want right now. “
But the concern is real. Just watching Zelenskyys reaches security layers, adding sandbag checkpoints, steel detectors, sniffer dogs, dozens of heavily armed infantrymen patrolling everywhere, snipers on rooftops, and his own elite non-public cover team, who spent an hour with my production team. running exactly where they can sit, so that they are not noticeable in front of the camera, but that they are close enough if something unfortunate happens. Nothing is left to the possibility of keeping the main guy alive.
After being told harrowing revelations about the Russian invasion and the frantic and murderous days that followed, I asked the Zelenskys for their opinion on Putin.
“It seems to me that the scariest thing is that he is sane and perceives what he is doing,” the president replied. “I would say that’s the scariest conclusion I can make: that he perceives what he’s doing. “doing, he knows how many other people he is killing. He knows how many other people have been raped, and by whom, and the number of young people killed or deported. Therefore, I only perceive one thing: the world has allowed this scenario to develop, it has allowed such a user to emerge, with this ideology and attitude towards other people. The global deserves to perceive that this result, this error, to allow this scenario, is the duty of the total global. “
The first girl may even decide to describe her contempt for the Russian dictator.
“It’s hard to put it into words,” he said, his face engraved with a bloodless fury. “It is not conceivable to perceive how a twisted concept can assign all of humanity to the medieval age. Actually, I have no words, and I don’t really need to say anything out loud because there are no general words to describe that. . . “
I told the president I went to Ukraine, other people reacted with horror at the thought of him making a deal with Russia by ceding an inch of territory.
“They hate him and that’s understandable,” he replied. When so many families have lost, for example, their neighbors, their children. Can Russia return a child? There are no emotions, just an emotion, hatred. “
He then added: “We are not in a position to industrialize or commercialize the territory of the Independent State of Ukraine. “
Zelenska understood the hatred.
“Any civilized user during this war would have horrible emotions, concern and hatred towards the enemy. If you are checking what kind of emotions the common user has during the existing war, I would tell them when they take their child to bed, look to believe what will happen at dusk if they hear the sirens and explosions next to the building where they live. What would they get out of their children’s room and where would they run if they identified that there is already a giant line of cars?Will they take their pets with them? And believe if you stay there and are under occupation.
“Imagine the path you regularly take your child to school with tanks. The grave of his next relative in his back garden because he can’t have a general funeral so as not to forget them. And think you have to look for water and your only source is a puddle of dirty water as in Mariupol. No there is medical service available. Imagine that you are at home and in two hours you are forced to face that kind of disorders just to stop and you do not do it. I don’t perceive why this is happening. “
It is the ultimate harsh representation of the truth of war among a civilian population that I have heard.
As her 18-year-old daughter, Oleksandra, prepares for college, her 9-year-old son, Kyrylo, will now be a soldier.
“As a father, I would be proud if my son had become a soldier, I can do it. I know he wears military-style clothes. It has a lot of weapons, not the kind of weapons we’ve gotten from our partners. “He is in a position to protect his mother and our family.
As for whether he believes he can win this war against a much larger military force, Zelenskyy remained steadfast in his certainty that he would defeat Putin.
KyIV HITS BY EXPLOSIONS AS WAR CONTINUES IN EASTERN UKRAINE
“Yes, not only that, I know it will happen. We will win, we have already shown everyone that it can kill us, but conquering our other people is impossible. It can occupy those towns and villages, but all of them would be destroyed. Because without ruining them, they would possibly not be able to take those places. “
The first girl had just returned from a trip to Washington, D. C. , to ask Congress to supply Ukraine with more equipment to fight the war.
However, despite an arms donation valued at more than $40 billion, President Biden has yet to stop in Ukraine as many other world leaders have done despite a non-public invitation from Zelenskyy.
And the Ukrainian leader to change.
“Is President Biden coming?” I asked.
“A lot!” the one in English.
Returning to the Ukrainian, he said: “It would be a wonderful sign, a wonderful sign. Everyone sees Ukraine’s attitude toward the United States. That would be the biggest help. And we had massive help from the first lady. She met Olena, and it was the right visit. Very, I would say, unexpected. I would say we expected a lot, but we didn’t expect it to happen. These are very vital things.
“So the trip, Olena possibly wouldn’t say it for herself, I can say, it was a very important moment, she did a wonderful job. And their efforts worked. There are quick decisions from Congress and the White House that emerged after his speech and scale in. And those are very important things. And, of course, President Biden’s scale in Ukraine would be the most powerful signal that can be given in favor of Ukraine.
“Did you invite him?”
“Yes. “
“Do you expect me to come?
“I don’t know, it’s his choice. I mean, not even your choice, it’s your safety, it’s your choice. I think if he has the chance, he will come. “
“Is there anything else america can do right now?” I asked.
“As the president of a country at war, I can tell you that aid will not be enough until the war is over and until we win. I talked to President Biden several times and talked to him about our other people and about our country, I said, ‘Forgive me if I’m company enough in my position,’ maybe some very diplomatic things, but he gave me a pretty dignified answer, which he understands and would do the same for me. “
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When I said that there were a growing number of Americans who did not believe that the country would spend so much money on a war in Europe when there were so many internal problems, he replied passionately:
“We fight for the values of the network for sure. The war in Ukraine is the war against the values professed in the United States and Europe. Russian rockets can fly a few thousand kilometers away. And tomorrow, they will have rockets that can cover tens of thousands of kilometers. What else gives? They kill civilians who do not agree with the policy of the president of Russia. So this war here and now in Ukraine, and forgive me for saying it so cynically, is for the security of Europe.
“As long as we resist it, the integrity of the United States will continue, so we give our lives for its values and the common security of the world. So, inflation is nothing, COVID is nothing. children, their peace, their goods at the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion. Who is thinking about mask and COVID?Who thinks about inflation? These things are secondary. The most important thing is to maintain and maintain your life, your circle of relatives and your country. Therefore, right now we are doing this work, yet the West wants to help us.
Throughout the interview, Zelenskyy refused to use a real-time translation device to perceive what I’m saying, indicating that they have an intelligent command of English.
But my Ukrainian is very limited: just two words, really, but that’s all I needed.
“Mr. President, First Lady, I greet you, we are all you. We want them to win this war, keep fighting. SLAVA UKRAINE!”
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“Glory to the heroes!” Zelensky replied. “Thank you. “
I don’t know if Ukraine can win this war against such complicated odds, but I do know that the Zelenskys are in it, and the fierce certainty of this remarkable couple fills me with the same hope they have instilled in their people.
Piers Morgan is the host of “Piers Morgan Uncensored” which can be on Fox Nation and is a columnist for the New York Post.