Zelenskyy believes Biden will visit Ukraine, ‘Everyone is talking…not everyone has got the guts’

(Video: CNN)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that actions speak louder than words and called on President Joe Biden to travel to the war-ravaged country to see the devastation for himself.

The leader who is being praised for his defiant stand against Russia’s weeks-long invasion of his country told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Biden “should come here to see” for himself while also expressing his frustration with so-called friends of Ukraine who speak against genocide while providing nothing but empty rhetoric.

“You lost ancestors in the Holocaust,” Tapper said to the Ukraine president in clips that sired on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.

“Every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, politicians put out statements that say ‘Never Again, Never Again.’ Those statements must seem really hollow right now to you. When the world says ‘never again,’ do they ever mean it?” he asked.

“I don’t believe the world, after we’ve seen what’s going on in Ukraine. I don’t believe to this feeling that we should believe, some countries or some leaders. We don’t believe the words,” Zelenskyy replied in English.

“After escalation of Russia, we don’t believe our neighbors. We don’t believe all of this. Even I don’t believe documents because we also had the Budapest Memorandum. I think you know all the details of this. For me, that is just a piece of paper, and costs nothing, and that’s it” he continued.

“So we just believe pragmatic things. If you are our friends or partners, give us weapons, give us hands, support us, give us money and stop Russia, kick Russia. You can do it if you’re a friend,” Zelenskyy added.

He appeared to hold back emotion as he added, reverting back to speaking Ukrainian, that “everybody is talking about this, and yet, as you can see, not everyone has got the guts.”

Tapper continued on the topic of genocide, noting the brutal treatment of Ukraine civilians by Russian forces, and asked Zelenskyy about specific reactions from France’s President Emanuel Macron as well as President Biden.

“Do you want President Biden to come here?” Tapper asked.

“Yes,” Zelenskyy responded quickly, again speaking in English.

(Video: CNN)

“Are there any plans for him to come?” Tapper questioned.

“I think he will,” the president said.

“You think he will?” the CNN host asked.

“I think he will,” Zelenskyy replied. “But it’s his decision, of course, and about the safety situation, it depends. But I think he’s the leader of the United States, and that’s why he should come here to see.”

Speaking with reporters last week at Joint Base Andrews as he prepared to board Air Force One on his way to Greensboro, North Carolina, Biden responded “yeah” when asked if he was ready to go to Ukraine himself. However, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a briefing last week that, “we are currently not planning a trip by the President of the United States to Ukraine.”

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was praised as one world leader who stepped up and visited the war-ravaged nation, seen in videos with Zelenskyy as he witnessed the destruction in the streets of Kyiv.

Frieda Powers

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