off the ground. 0n the international stage, zelensky had to learn fast. he found himself caught up in donald trump s attempts to use american military aid to get ukraine to investigate his rival, joe biden. for zelensky, it was important to generate more support for ukraine and not to be a part of domestic political games so, of course, lack of experience could create some problems at that time, but this is how he learned what international policy is, and how not to be in the trap how to diplomatically present ukraine, but not to be used for the interests of somebody. with rumours of impeachment hearings mounting, zelensky met trump in new york. his acting skills, for once, deserted him. because of the dynamic in the united states,
russian tv and the kremlin have resorted to hurling unsubstantiated insults towards kyiv. this guy has a nerve, i mean zelensky, he has balls. because the thing is, the first days, it was a disaster it was stress, it was depression. and all of a sudden you see somebody who behaves very different, and he is the president of your country, and this works immensely on ukrainians. before this war, zelensky struggled to get invites to western capitals.
have enabled zelensky to speak directly to ukrainians and people around the world. at times, the news has been almost unspeakably bleak. through it all, zelensky has sought to raise spirits and to inspire hope. we have young, smart charismatic personalities, who deliver simple messages, who basically tell the truth. and then you see putin, who is ageing, who is hiding somewhere, who has this long table, and nobody knows what he is thinking.
so we have many scriptwriters, different humour. they speak about their ideas and i am the decision maker. so you are deciding whether their ideas are funny or not? yes, yes. 0ur audience, especially tv audience, yes, it is a little bit older than, for example, movie audience in feature films. what sort of humour do people like here, if you were to compare it to british humour? we love british humour. he laughs for example, for example. he speaks in ukranian if compare. if compare in britain, if compare, our people, they more understand, for example, mr bean or benny hill. benny hill! yeah, yeah. really? so you re sort of looking for benny hill mr bean type jokes, rather than the more kind of surreal monty python stuff? yes. he sings for over 25 years, i only thought about him as a comedian, a professional comedian, a good one,
ukraine on purpose. it is not for lack of some formula, he is doing it because he is trying to weaken ukraine. i think he was initially sceptical of that, but i think as he tried to talk with putin, tried to do a couple of prisoner exchanges, i think he came to the view that actually putin is fighting a war that he wants to fight. later that year, the only meeting between zelensky and president putin took place in paris, with the leaders of france and germany acting as chaperones. but the talks were frosty and went nowhere. paris was the endpoint for zelensky s attempts to strike a deal. until this war broke out, zelensky s time as president was showing some signs of fizzling out. he d promised a lot and, perhaps understandably,