Home Europe All joking and impeachment aside, Zelenskiy still hopes to visit White House

All joking and impeachment aside, Zelenskiy still hopes to visit White House

by editor

MUNICH — It was part speech, part interview, and part stand-up comedy routine, delivered by a sitting president — Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine.

In fairness, Zelenskiy was only sitting part of the time. The rest of the time, he was standing — at a lectern, where he showed off his skills as a professional comic, and standing up for his country, which was turned into a prop in the U.S. impeachment saga.

Zelenskiy also used the speech and interview, during the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday, to make some serious points. Among them: He would still very much like an invitation to the White House (President Donald Trump allegedly withheld such an invitation as part of the pressure campaign on Ukraine that led to his impeachment on a charge of abuse of power) and he wants Trump to visit Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, as soon as possible.

Zelenskiy, a former actor who played a president on TV before running and winning the actual office last year, began delivering one-liners right from the start. He was holding a microphone in his hand when a technician came over, clipped another microphone to the president’s tie and then walked away.

“And I still need this?” Zelenskiy asked holding out the mic in his hand, as the audience laughed. “Two is much,” he said in English.

He continued, telling the crowd, “I will speak in Ukrainian language and you will have translation. But I will do during my five years — I will do, I will do everything for you — to know Ukrainian.” More laughs. “We will meet many times, I am sure,” he said.

Zelenskiy delivered brief prepared remarks, but things really began to heat up when he sat for an interview with Christiane Amanpour, the CNN anchor. When Amanpour urged him to put in an earpiece for translation, Zelenskiy insisted on using a full headset. “I have big ears, that’s why it’s better,” he quipped.

Then, as the technicians seemed to struggle with setting up the audio, Zelenskiy joked that he was listening to music.

“Seriously?” a surprised Amanpour asked, uncertain if he was kidding. “Are you hearing music?”

“No, no, I hear you,” he said.

“Maybe my voice is music to your ears,” Amanpour joked back.

When Amanpour, in her second question, turned to the subject of impeachment, Zelenskiy was ready.

“I was waiting this question, of course,” he said, in choppy English. “I have many questions about impeachment everywhere. In my previous life, in my previous profession, I truly say when I was producer, scriptwriter and actor, I wanted to get Oscar. I wanted to be very popular in U.S.A.”

“Now,” he said, spreading out his arms and waving them for emphasis, “now, I am very popular in U.S.A.”

As the audience cracked up, Zelenskiy said this was not how he expected to gain fame in America — known for a phone call in which U.S. President Donald Trump pressured him to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son.

“I didn’t want to find [fame in] such way,” Zelenskiy said. ” But you know, if this way will help Ukraine, I am ready for next call with Mr. Trump.”

Zelenskiy, however, quickly pivoted to insist that relations with the U.S. were strong and to plead for additional support.

“I want to thank you guys and thank everybody, and president and USA, just ordinary American people, first of all. For support, for supporting Ukraine especially now when we have war,” he said. “We feel it. We feel it with our hearts, with our body. And I am always saying to everybody, to U.S.A. and to Europe, everybody: But help more.”

Later, when Amanpour asked about a potential White House visit, Zelenskiy said he was confident the time would come.

“I am sure it will happen,” he said. “You are too far from us, distant. Well, you know it seems to me that the last time that I met the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, we talked about that. And I said I would very much like that my visit to the United States would be something special for both countries where there is an important and substantive outcome and result for both countries, something beneficial for both countries.”

After all the drama about impeachment, he said, “I want to come and start it from scratch, our relations, to agree on some contracts, to sign some arrangements, to agree on the strategic things, investments. Let’s prepare the package of the documents and arrange the meeting. So the ball is in the courtyard of the United States of America.”

Zelenskiy said that in the meantime he wanted to invite Trump to visit Ukraine: “We are always happy to see everyone in Ukraine, so I am ready to invite President Trump to come to Kyiv and I am ready to welcome him to Kyiv earlier than he is available.”

In response to a different question, Zelenskiy said he had urged Trump, when they me near the United Nations in September, to please stop bashing Ukraine as a corrupt country,

“I told him very honestly and I was very open with him, I told him we fight with corruption, we fight with this, fight each day. But please, please stop to say that Ukraine is a corrupted country, because from now, it’s not truth,” Zelenskiy said, his tone clearly serious. “We want to change this image.”

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