I asked Ukraine’s president about Trump’s often contradictory statements, recalling that among the untruths he has uttered is the accusation that Zelensky is a dictator who started the war – a precise echo of claims made by Vladimir Putin.
Zelensky laughed.
“I am not a dictator, and I didn’t start the war, that’s it.”
But can you trust President Trump? If you extract a security guarantee from him, I asked, would he keep his word? He is after all a man who changes his mind.
“It is not only President Trump, we’re talking about America. We are all presidents for the appropriate terms. We want guarantees for 30 years for example. Political elites will change, leaders will change.”
He meant that US security guarantees needed approval from Congress in Washington DC to make them watertight.
“They will be voted on in Congress for a reason. It’s not just presidents. Congress is needed. Because the presidents change, but institutions stay.”
In other words, Donald Trump might be unreliable, but he will not be there for ever.
Zelensky says those security guarantees would have to be in place before he could consider another American demand – the US demand for Ukraine to hold a general election by the summer, echoing another Russian talking point that Zelensky is an illegitimate president. Trump has not demanded elections in Russia, where Putin became leader for the first time on the last day of the 20th Century.
Zelensky said he had not decided whether to stand again, whenever an election is held: “I might run and might not.”
Elections were due in 2024, but they could not be held under martial law that was introduced after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Holding postponed elections, Zelensky said, was technically possible if they had time to change the law to allow them to happen. But he needed security guarantees for Ukraine first.
He went on to raise so many potential problems about holding an election with millions of Ukrainians abroad as refugees and significant tracts of the country occupied by Russia that I suggested that in reality he was against the idea.
“If this is a condition for ending the war, let’s do it. I said, ‘honestly, you constantly raise the issue of elections’. I told the partners, ‘you need to decide one thing: you want to get rid of me or you want to hold elections? If you want to hold elections, (even if you are not ready to tell me honestly even now), then hold these elections honestly. Hold them in a way that the Ukrainian people will recognise, first of all. And you yourself must recognise that these are legitimate elections'”.