Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned international corporate media and world leaders like President Joe Biden for publicly predicting imminent war with Russia on Friday, stating that the panic caused by these statements cost Ukraine 12.5 billion hryvnia (about $437 million) in foreign investment.
Zelensky spent nearly an hour and a half with reporters at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday following what has become a controversial phone conversation with President Biden on Thursday night. While the official readouts from both Washington and Kyiv depicted the call as productive and friendly, a CNN report based on anonymous sources described the call as frustrating and tedious, featuring harried warnings from Biden that Kyiv would be “sacked” and exasperated requests from Zelensky for the president to “calm down.”
Both the White House and the Ukrainian president’s office have rejected the CNN report, and Zelensky himself, during the press conference, repeatedly expressed gratitude to Biden without addressing the acute challenges the CNN report claimed exist in the relationship.
Zelensky did tell reporters that he spent much of the call emphasizing to Biden that telling the world that Russia would imminently invade Ukraine – something Kyiv has repeatedlystated there is little material evidence to believe – could lead to economic devastation in the country that would, in turn, increase the probability of a full-fledged Russian assault.
