The president can’t change the country on his own. But what can he do? He can give an example.
I would never want Ukraine to be a piece on the map, on the chessboard of big global players, so that someone could toss us around, use us as cover, as part of some bargain.
Chernobyl has been a negative part of Ukraine’s brand. The time has come to change this.
Please, please stop saying that Ukraine is a corrupt country, because from now, it’s not true. We want to change this image.
In today’s world, where we live, there is no longer someone else’s war. None of you can feel safe when there is a war in Ukraine, when there is a war in Europe.
The war is a big disaster, and this disaster has a high price. With every meaning of this word. People lose money, reputation, quality of life, they lose freedom. But the main thing is that people lose their loved ones, they lose themselves.
The people of Ukraine want peace. The government in Ukraine wants peace and is doing everything it can to build it.
The Ukrainian nation, as no other nation, understands and is fully aware of the tragedy and its scale of all the lost lives of the Ukrainian Jews during the Second World War.
I respect Israel as hugely special, especially given all the sensitivities around it. The Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains.
Honoring the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, in which more than two million Ukrainian Jews died, Ukraine calls on Israel to also recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
We as a country have something to learn from Israel, especially in the areas of security and defense, and we will of course be doing that.
This is larger in scale and scope in the massing of forces than anything we’ve seen in recent memory, and I think you’d have to go back quite a while into the Cold War days to see something of this magnitude.
Neighbors always enrich each other culturally. However, that doesn’t make them a single whole. It doesn’t dissolve us into Russia.
Several weeks ago we made the point that Russian agents had already infiltrated Ukraine; they were operating inside the country.
According to our information, the enemy marked me as target No. 1, my family as target No. 2. They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state. We have information that enemy sabotage groups have entered Kyiv.
We are different from Russians, but that is not a reason to be enemies. We want to determine, build our future ourselves, peacefully, calmly and honestly.
Vladimir Putin claims we are Nazis. But can a people support Nazis that gave more than eight million lives for the victory over Nazism? How can I be a Nazi? Tell my grandpa, who went through the whole war in the infantry of the Soviet Army and died as a colonel in independent Ukraine.
I do not want my picture in your offices. The president is not an icon, an idol or a portrait. Hang your kids’ photos instead, and look at them each time you are making a decision.
I do not try to play a role. I feel good being myself and saying what I think.
This night will be very difficult, and the enemy will use all available forces to break the resistance of Ukrainians. The fate of Ukraine is being decided right now.