President Zelenskyy: It's Time To Tell You The Truth About The War! They Found 500 Bodies!
- Guest
- President Zelenskyy
- Read time
- ~5 min
- Uploaded
- 22 Oct 2026
- Duration
- 1:49:57
- Views
- 4.8M
KEYPOINTS
- 01
Nearly five years in, Zelenskyy says he barely sleeps because he is in nightly contact with Ukraine's air-defence crews.
Every night he texts the operators about what is needed and whether to pull systems over from another region. Eight hours of sleep would be "something totally new"; in the first days of the invasion he slept in roughly 15-minute bursts. He insists he is not complaining.
- 02
The moment he finds hardest is presenting the Hero of Ukraine award to parents of fallen soldiers.
He describes "ceasing to exist" in those ceremonies. One father with a strong man's grip quietly asked, "Can we hug?" Those parents knew a soldier might die, but "knowing and losing are completely different things" — and his own pain is "not even 10%" of theirs.
- 03
He dates the real start of the war to Crimea in 2014, and calls Ukraine's failure to fight back the original mistake.
Russia's unmarked "little green men" met no clear order to resist; dozens, at most hundreds, of soldiers took a region of about 3 million people. Here he agrees with Trump: had Crimea not been allowed to fall, he doubts the full-scale war would have happened, because its ease taught Putin he could take Kyiv the same way.
- 04
His plain-language account of Putin's motive: rebuilding the Soviet empire, in which Ukraine was "country number two."
Empires survive only through autocracy and information control — people living "like fish in a fish tank," whether it's the USSR or North Korea. Putin, an ex-KGB officer, called the Soviet collapse the century's greatest catastrophe. Ukraine was the Soviet "forge of talent" — scientists, engineers, rockets, nuclear weapons it later gave up — and a European Ukraine threatens Russia's own cohesion. Chechnya was the template; "protecting Russian speakers" the pretext.
- 05
He dismisses both 'Lenin created Ukraine' and 'denazification.'
Ukraine has thousand-year-old churches and is heir to Kievan Rus, which predates Russia; Putin starts history in 1917 to sell Soviet nostalgia. Ukraine was 100% occupied in World War II, unlike Russia, and every one of his grandfather's brothers was killed by the Nazis.
- 06
Before the invasion he asked for weapons and pre-emptive sanctions; Biden would sanction only afterwards, which Zelenskyy calls a mistake.
Partners thought Putin was bluffing: Russia's annual Belarus drills even hosted Ukraine's defence minister, and Putin assured European leaders the day before that he wouldn't invade. Zelenskyy admits he didn't believe a full-scale invasion was coming either.
- 07
Kyiv held, he argues, because Russia planned for a country that wouldn't resist.
Ukraine's main forces faced Donbas; its whole army was under 200,000 against an invasion force of up to about 200,000. Taking Kyiv and holding every town under resistance needed perhaps 300–400,000. Volunteers queued to enlist and the army grew to about 800,000, against roughly 700,000 Russian troops. Captured units carried parade uniforms for a victory march.
- 08
Staying in Kyiv — and being seen there — was a deliberate counter to Russia's plan to make the leader flee.
Biden was first to offer evacuation; the reply was "I need ammunition, not a ride." He worked from a deep bunker under his office and pleaded with European leaders by video call from there. When Russia claimed he had fled, he filmed on Bankova Street two or three times a day. Soldiers later told him it mattered.
- 09
Bucha changed him, and explains why he calls a ceasefire on current lines 'a huge compromise.'
He had journalists brought in before anything was touched: bodies on the pavement, hands tied, a mass grave of around 500 tortured people. An elderly survivor of the WWII occupation said the fascists never behaved like that. Zelenskyy says it was the first time he wanted to kill someone. You can't force parents to forgive, so a just peace must at least show a path to punishment.
- 10
Russia holds about 18–19% of Ukraine and wants the fortified east Ukraine still controls.
The demand is the rest of Donetsk region — Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka — a defensive belt opening onto Dnipropetrovsk, Pavlohrad, Nikopol and his hometown of Kryvyi Rih. Surrendering it without real security guarantees, he argues, invites a further advance.
EXAMPLES
- 01
A playground missile strike
The missile was too fast for the siren to help. Children and passers-by were killed while parents watched from nearby windows; mourners bring flowers for adults and toys for children.
- 02
From comedy writer to the president he once played
A comedy scriptwriter from 17 to 26, he later won Ukraine's Dancing with the Stars, voiced Paddington, and played an accidental president in Servant of the People — an idea he'd carried for 10–12 years. He says the real party wasn't calculated: Crimea felt like a betrayal while his company still had offices in Russia.
- 03
The first 20 days
He told his wife, "The war has started. I love you. I'll call you," and was first or second into the office. Only about 20 days in did the scale sink in; before that it was reopening roads for food and water, keeping bank cards working, and waking Poland's President Duda at night over a weapons warehouse.
- 04
Rejecting Trump's 'wrong turn into the mud' story
Russia did reach and surround Kyiv, he says; hundreds of armoured vehicles burned, with civilians setting them alight. Hostomel airport changed hands before the National Guard retook it, and Ukraine wrecked its own runway — had Russia landed a large force there, most of the capital might have fallen.
- 05
The diesel dispute
Zelenskyy says Russian diesel is too small a volume to move US prices, that Ukraine's refinery strikes answer attacks on its power grid, and that the real shock is the blocked Strait of Hormuz. Putin refused his proposed energy ceasefire; Washington then refused to sell Patriot interceptors that Europe would fund.
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
Would Trump have prevented it? 'Nobody knows.'
Trump's rapport with Putin might have delayed it, but presidents are temporary and Putin's goal is not: "it doesn't matter who the president is as long as Putin is there."
- 02
His path to peace runs through Washington's tone toward Moscow
Trump could bring Putin to the table by using on him the rhetoric he uses on Zelenskyy and by signing the sanctions Congress has passed. The host cites polling that about 76% of Ukrainians don't want an election now.
- 03
Nuclear use is unlikely, but Putin won't leave willingly
It would cost Russia every ally, China included, and set a dangerous precedent. Still, he expects Putin to hold power until he dies.
- 04
What the war taught him about what matters
Business is now secondary to family; he misses his children even when they're in the room. His mother still calls daily — sometimes 12 missed calls — asking when Putin will end the war.