Zelensky Torches Biden on the Way Out: Refusal to Sanction Putin ‘Bullshit’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lamented the hesitation on the part of outgoing President Joe Biden to preventatively sanction Russia before the 2022 full-scale invasion of his country in an interview published on Sunday, describing threats to sanction Moscow only after an invasion “bullshit.”

Zelensky made the comments in a three-hour interview with podcaster Lex Fridman that the Ukrainian government-run United24 platform described as “bold” and candid, focusing much of its time on the ongoing invasion of the country and Kyiv’s relationship with America – under both Biden and President-elect Donald Trump.

Ukraine has been in some form of war with Russia and its proxies for over a decade – since Russia colonized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, under President Barack Obama. The “annexation” of Crimea was accompanied by an ongoing war in the eastern Donbass region, which began as a conflict between Ukraine and pro-Russia separatists but after 2022 has become a direct war between the Russian military and Ukraine. Zelensky, a comic actor with no prior political experience, won the 2019 presidential election largely on public sentiment souring against the corrupt establishment, which in the West was considered “pro-Europe” and resulted in Zelensky being branded “pro-Russian.”

As president, Zelensky maintained a friendly relationship with then-President Donald Trump that continues to this day and later struggled to establish a functional relationship with Biden. The February 2022 Russian “special operation” to oust Zelensky preceded Biden’s decision the summer before to lift sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which would have given Russia a stranglehold on natural gas sales to much of western Europe.

The Nord Stream project ended abruptly in September 2022 when several mysterious underwater explosions destroyed its pipelines.

Zelensky recalled in his interview with Fridman that the sanctions lifting, as well as the refusal by Biden and European allies to impose further sanctions on Russia to deprive it of resources to invade Ukraine, infuriated him.

“I asked only for one thing, primarily from the United States – if you are sure, if you have evidence, if you talk to him [Putin] and he tells you that there will be an invasion, if all this scares you,” he explained, “I only asked for two things: send us weapons, or better yet, strengthen us with preventive measures so there would be no war.”

“It wasn’t the weapons that I was asking for – I asked for sanctions. Intimidate him,” he emphasized. “Please don’t say ‘If he comes, if he crosses borders, if he kills, we’re imposing sanctions.’ Well, this is complete bullshit. Sorry, but really.”

Zelensky added wryly that Kyiv received no meaningful help from the West immediately before the 2022 invasion: “If we assume that words are help, well then yes, we received a lot of it, because there were plenty of words.”

The six months before February 2022 were marked by tensions between Biden and Zelensky boiling over into the public eye, beginning with an infuriated interview Zelensky gave to the Washington, DC, outlet Axios in which he claimed he found out that Biden lifted Trump’s Nord Stream sanctions from television and lamented that empowering the Russian natural gas industry was a direct national security threat to Ukraine.

“It still seems to me that Nord Stream 2 … we understand that this is a weapon, a real weapon, and I speak openly about it,” Zelensky said at the time. “A weapon in the hands of the Russian Federation, and it is not very understandable, I feel, and definitely not expected, that the bullets to this weapon can possibly be provided by such a great country as the United States.”

“You know, we had this first conversation with President Biden, it was a phone conversation, and I received all the signals. They were direct signals, and I was very happy about it,” he continued. “Biden knows Ukraine better than any other previous, former President, and therefore he understands all the issues, and, what’s most important, all the security risks. That is why, again, we were very unpleasantly surprised.”

Zelensky went on in that interview to accuse Biden of being willing to sacrifice Ukrainian lives to placate Germany, one of the top beneficiaries of the Nord Stream project.

In December 2021, two months before the Russian “special operation,” Zelensky condemned the lack of sanctions on Russia using language very similar to that in the interview with Fridman this week.

“As for the sanctions policy. Some leaders suggest a format of responding format (…) after a possible escalation on the part of Russia to introduce a strong sanctions policy,” he said following meetings with European leaders at the time. “Here, it seems to me that we were able to explain to our European colleagues that the sanctions policy following (such escalation – ed.) won’t matter to anyone.”

“Our state is interested in a strong sanctions policy that would precede a possible escalation, and then, I suggest, this escalation might not even occur,” he asserted.

The “strong sanctions policy” never came, and the escalation occurred. Zelensky appeared optimistic in the interview this weekend about a changing of the guard at the White House to a president with a reputation for liberally imposing sanctions on international rogue actors.

“I love that message of President Trump, when he says—peace through strength. That is very important. If you are strong, you can speak. And we need to be strong,” Zelensky told Fridman. “Do you think Putin wants to end the war? That’s naïve, I am sorry. The only thing he understands is fear and strength.”

Zelensky also reflected negatively on his last attempt at dialogue with Putin in person.

“In December 2019 in Normandy, in Paris at the Elysee Palace, [French President Emmanuel] Macron, [then-German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, Putin and I agreed on the ceasefire and prisoner exchanges,” he recalled. “Putin wasn’t deeply involved in the issue and didn’t seem to care for the details. But he knew every detail when gas to Europe was mentioned—something Merkel asked me to address.“

The “Normandy Four” talks, in December 2019, failed entirely to prevent the ongoing Ukraine war. Zelensky at the time left the talks downtrodden, telling reporters the conversations were largely useless.

“Look, it’s very difficult to negotiate [with Putin], but today there were moments when we agreed on something, on certain things,” Zelensky explained. “That’s because he dissects every question into details … and then we begin to even consider every word. So yes, this is difficult. I’m just a different person, I’m a quick person. I thought that we could just sit down real quick and have a deal … But it’s different here, it’s different biomechanics, so to speak.”

“My counterparts have said it is a very good result for a first meeting. But I will be honest — it is very little, I wanted to resolve a larger number of problems,” he said.

Putin called that meeting “very useful” at the time.

In April 2021, Zelensky suggested that Ukraine needed “serious” countries to mediate talks with Putin, instead of France and Germany.

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