In an Oct. 22 interview with British podcaster Steven Bartlett, Zelenskyy said Trump could bring Putin to the negotiating table “very easily.” He argued Trump should use toward Putin the kind of rhetoric he had used in exchanges with Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy said he did not know why Trump had not imposed sanctions on Russia that Congress had approved. He raised a possible “special relationship” between Trump and Putin as one explanation, but said he could not be certain.
The interview also included a clip of Trump criticizing Ukraine's attacks on Russian refineries. Trump said the strikes could worsen global fuel shortages, and Bartlett framed the warning as a concern about diesel supplies. Zelenskyy described Ukraine's strikes on Russian energy facilities as a response to Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy system. He rejected Trump's blame for higher U.S. diesel prices, saying, “That is absolutely not true.”
The remarks followed Zelenskyy's Oct. 20 account that Putin had rejected reciprocal limits on energy strikes.
