In the grounds of the Marinsky Palace in central Kyiv, I met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the eve of his latest trip abroad to visit allied nations after a tough week of domestic politics at home. We discussed all that plus dealing with Britain's new prime minister and where he thinks the war goes from here.
Mr. President, thank you for speaking to me again. I know you've had a bit of a challenging week which I will come to shortly, but can I ask you about whether there's any end in sight for this war? As the US Secretary of State met the Russian foreign minister, nothing much seemed to come out of that meeting other than Russia asked the US to stop supplying Ukraine with weapons. Is there anything possible to achieve a peace deal with President Putin?
Thank you very much. This week, it's not about a challenging week or weeks and months, to be honest. It's a pity, but it's already about years of this war, and it's a big challenge for us. What we tried to do is make this challenge also for Russians, otherwise they will not feel that the war is everywhere, not only in Ukraine, on the front line, everywhere in Ukraine for people, the war is for children, for families, etc. That's why we started to do everything to respond and to bring this war back to Russia where it came to us. So, and that's why we started our mid strikes and deep strikes operations just to respond. And it gives us possibility to be more strong. Russia and Putin, they don't respect weak.
I can't use weak partners because we are not partners, even weak enemies, because we are enemies for them and they are enemies for us. So this is very understandable that we became more strong with all our drone productions, with this new technological industry, with our missiles and now we are on the way of ballistic productions and our own air defense. On the way, and of course not only by our talented people, creative people, but of course also with the support of our friends, of our partners. We came so strong as we are now but not enough to stop Putin. So that's why when you ask where we are with this, the first we have to be strong and we are, we do everything as I said to you for this. The second point, we need strong partners, and partners have to be more strong with sanctions against Russia. Sometimes they are not so strong. I'm thankful for 20 packages, the 21st already been voted by EU, but it's not enough. Also UK, also United States, also Norway and other non-EU members. So they have to pressure more. More means that if you put sanctions on oil, it means that 100%, not for this person or that person. This oligarch is good, he is somewhere in Europe, in Switzerland or in London, and they live a long period of time. That's why they are not Russian, they something similar but no. And I think that the answer is if you want to be strong and push Putin, you have to do it everywhere on the battlefield, air defense. Don't play these games with us. Help us and totally close the sky to be strong and put sanctions everywhere. Rubio and Lavrov, you said that they talk with all respect to United States. Look,
Putin is not ready to stop this war. I've got the brief from intelligence. He is preparing mobilization. He wants to do it after elections on 21st of September. He wants to increase mobilization in his country not very openly because he is afraid of his society, but he will do it the first days of October if we will not bring him problems with logistics, weapon, patrol these, and if our partners will not push total sanctions against his aggression. If he does mobilize, though, that's a lot of potentially a lot of soldiers. That's going to be a big problem for Ukraine. It will be a big problem because he will count on mobilization about 300,000 to 500,000. So it's not difficult for him to mobilize. Yes, these people. Yes, he will have internal questions about it because his society is against the mobilization and a big percentage is against the war, but they support him. The biggest problem, he will not be able to train them quickly. It means again he will push on the battlefield people who are not well trained and mostly they will not be trained. It means a lot of losses, but it's up to him to do it or not.
President Putin has shown no real signs of wanting peace at all. However much it costs him.
First of all, people around him, half of the people who are closer to business, big business, not only, so they are against this war, they feel the problems with the economy. The second point, military guys around here want to have more money on military tech production, on this huge budgets what they really have what they spend on this war. So they are against peace, they want this war to be continued. So this is where we are. Then he has problems with petrol. He began to import energy to his country. Of course, Lukashenko, I think it's big risks for Lukashenko. He is trying not to be involved in this war. And from this side, he has two factories and they give petrol and they give diesel to Moscow and to St. Petersburg.
You're off to the United States. You'll likely meet President Trump. What are you going to say to the United States? What do you need from them?
I need air defense. I need PAC-2, PAC-3. It's not offensive weapon. We found money from Europe. We paid this money through program Pearl, but we don't have enough missiles to defend. This is a problem. Not enough sanctions on Russian military production. They can increase the production of ballistic missiles. So that's why we need air defense as quick as possible, and because of the Middle East we have a deficit with this. Now I understand the roots of the problem. I understand the relations between the United States and Middle East countries, and I understand the United States is focusing on the Middle East, but because of this we have this challenge. For us, it's a big challenge. I try to manage it now with some Europeans and with Americans and with some other countries. This is a big challenge for Ukraine. We need to do it as quick as possible. So this is a topic I want to discuss with President Trump, and also negotiations and what format we will work further because we had a pause. It's true, but now Steve and Jared began to work on it. I had a phone conversation with them. They had three ideas. I will not go into details because they wanted not to be very open. They just sent me basic things.
So were they acceptable to you?
No, no. It's just basic. We need to discuss it. I hope that we will discuss these ideas. And this is important. Also, we have now three moments on which we have to focus. First, North Korea will send to Russia 30,000 soldiers. Second, of course with this first point, a lot of things will prolong this war. It will be problems not for us, for Asia and also for the United States and the West.
The second point, not only North Korea, Iranians will send missiles to Russia, and this is a problem because it will be ballistic missiles against us, and not only ballistic missiles. Then what is really a big problem, China began to work with Russia and they work on satellites and on technologies to be more precise in attacking us.
Mhm. One night we had 40 ballistic missiles in an hour or so. Can you not defend against that type of attack?
40 missiles. 40 ballistic missiles plus cruise missiles plus hundreds of drones. We don't have enough to destroy ballistic missiles. We have everything our self-made Ukrainian production to destroy drones and a lot of different things. We also destroy some kind of missiles, but we can't destroy ballistic missiles. We need support of our partners. Of course we are on the way to make our Ukrainian European air defense system, antiballistic air defense, but we need some time for this. The second point, we discussed with President Trump and he accepted that he will give me licenses for Patriot missile production in Ukraine. But it's again because of bureaucracy, it's not like we decided and the next day we have a technical group and a week after we begin to produce and in months we have hundreds of these missiles in our storage. No, it doesn't work like that. We can work during the war very quickly in Ukraine. That's why I always shared from the first year of the war with the previous administration and with Europeans when I asked them, look, when we have SCALPs or Storm Shadows from the UK, when we have Mistrals from France, when we have Patriots from the United States, give us licenses not for the whole period, just for the war time. We will use it. We will increase production. We will give you this production. We will not sell to anybody else. We will do it exactly for Ukraine's needs and for your partners if you need it. But I couldn't get this successful decision from parties. Now President Trump's decision that he will give, then I spoke with Emmanuel Macron, he also said that he will help me with licenses for Mistrals and some others. It's still on the way.
How do you get on with President Trump now?
I think good. We had good meetings with him. The G7 meeting was very good. The NATO meeting during the summit in Ankara was also good. I hope and count that our relations will be better. We need it. We need unity between the United States and Europe. We need everybody during this war, from the Baltics to the United States. It's all about unity, unanimity.
Just turning to British politics briefly. Would you believe that Keir Starmer is the fifth British prime minister since the full-scale invasion in 2022? Do those changes in the British government worry you? Do you think he understands Britain's commitment to Ukraine? Are you confident it will continue?
I had good visits. Starmer's visit to Ukraine and we spoke about it, and he said that the new government will continue the policy of supporting Ukraine during this war. Then I had a very good phone call with the new prime minister. I congratulated him. We spoke about some basic things, not with details because I understand what it means when you just became the leader. You have to focus on internal questions. I count that we will have a productive, very open bilateral meeting and we will speak about all the things. We made a lot of things with Rishi, and we need to continue and also to have a new page in our relations. For example, a drone deal is very important. I want to build a big factory in Britain of new technologies and share with our partners. We are ready to share all our experience with the UK, and I hope the UK will do the same. So we need to make this drone deal very strong. I also count when we will speak, I will say about not only our needs, how we see our bilateral relations further, what we can do together to strengthen Ukraine and the UK.
Interestingly, you mentioned it about helping countries like Britain are pretty defenseless themselves. There's no way of taking things out of the sky.
Money, intelligence, technologies. It's really difficult. It doesn't mean that you need only money from the UK. It means that there are three points which are very important to build something new. You need funding, you need technologies we have, and by the way, we both have them. The UK also has, as I said, till now we began to build missiles, we have good missiles, but till now we see the strong Storm Shadows what the UK has. We want to produce this or something similar, and the UK wants to have such drones as we have, including sea drones. We are open for this. Technologies and what the UK gave us are very important. We are ready now with our experience to give something what the UK will need or want to share it with the UK. For example, the United Kingdom doesn't have air defense. They have some, but it's not about antiballistic. Yes, it's true. I think this is a problem for all Europe. I know everything what Europe has, what one or another country has, what they have in stocks. I had to learn it. I know all this because I had to know. I know specific things in different countries. So it's not enough. It's not even minimum. In such a war, it's not about just antiballistic. It's about how you defend your country. It's a system of experience, and antiballistic is a part of this system. So we want to share this system and we need to build our European system, a huge strong antiballistic system. This is where we are. We can work together. Have you or any of your team had any phone calls or talks with Britain's new foreign secretary and defense minister?
No, we already had connections. You know that some people in this team, and Minister Hill for example, but the new ones haven't rung you or anyone?
No. I just spoke with the prime minister, and we decided that we will have a meeting as soon as possible. Our ministers at different levels, after our meeting, will have meetings and connections.
