Zelensky re-ups invite for Trump to visit Ukrainian front lines
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday re-upped his offer to give Donald Trump a tour of the front lines of his country’s war with Russia.
“I suggest [for] him just to come. I’m ready to go with him,” the Ukrainian leader told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier during an interview from Kupiansk, just a mile and half from Russian troop positions on the war’s eastern front.
“Maybe he wants alone, without me. It doesn’t matter for me. Come, see people, just to speak to them on the street,” Zelensky said.
When asked by Baier what he would tell the Republican presidential primary front-runner if he were to visit the battlefield, Zelensky suggested that the ever-present sound of artillery fire would do the talking.
“I think his eyes, first of all, his eyes, ears … will tell him what’s going on,” the Ukrainian president said.
Zelensky has extended invitations for Trump to visit the war-torn country on a few occasions, but the war-time president took it a step further at the Munich Security Conference last week, where he first made the offer to take the 77-year-old former president on a tour of the front lines.
“If Trump, Mr. Trump, if he will come, I am ready even to go with him to the front line,” Zelensky, 46, said at the annual policy summit in Germany.
He told Baier that the invitation is open to others as well.
“I’m happy to see all the candidates and all the people who are decision-makers or can support, not to be against,” Zelensky said. “Just understand what the war in Ukraine means, who opened this war, who began it, and what’s going on, what’s around, what brilliant Ukraine we had.”
“We have [a] beautiful country, but, in the war, it’s another picture and other lives.”
Trump has recently argued that Congress shouldn’t approve additional aid to Ukraine “unless it is done as a loan.”
The former president has also insisted that if elected to a second term in the White House he would end the conflict “within 24 hours” – a boast light on details.
“See, I can’t understand how it can be,” Zelensky said of Trump’s claim. “He can solve this problem, this tragedy with me, yes, of course. He – I will explain everything. And he will explain what his thoughts. Maybe he has some ideas. I don’t know.
“But he will see what’s going on. And, after that, I think he will change his mind, and he will – understand that there is no two, two sides of this war. There is only one enemy, and this is the position of Putin.”
