The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has its controversial statements to a “Pre-emptive strike” against Russia defused in a television interview. “You have to do pre-emptive kicks, not attacks. We are no terrorists, we are not attacking any other territory,” Zelenskyy said in a BBC interview in English on Friday in Kyiv. Even after all the suffering of the war, Ukraine is still not ready “to kill people like the Russians do”.
Zelenskyi caused a stir on Thursday with calls for the decisive prevention of a Russian use of nuclear weapons. During an appearance he said: “What should NATO do? Make it impossible for Russia to use nuclear weapons. But it is important – I am therefore turning to the international community as before the 24th (February) – that these are preventive strikes, so that they know what is in store for them if they use them.”
A little later one of his spokesmen emphasized that the Ukrainian President was misunderstood: Selenskyj only wanted to say that before February 24th – the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine – preventive measures were necessary to prevent the war. The Kremlin in Moscow nevertheless sharply condemned the statements as a “call for the beginning of the Third World War”.