putin trusted prigozhin is that prigozhin served food for him. knowing putin s paranoia, he could not have had anybody in charge of his diet. i think what prigozhin achieved in all of those years, that is greatly undercounted or not really understood very well is that he was always discreet. it was a very trusted agent, somebody who could be relied upon to do well, to deliver, be discreet. putin quickly climbed through the ranks until he became president of russia. prigozhin was now an insider, trusted by putin, but he wanted his own seat at the table. so putin gave prigozhin a contract. it was an opportunity to help the boss and make money for himself. it was in the most unlikely of places.
they left those bodies on purpose as a way to terrorize the ukrainian people. so you re absolutely right. we keep talking about the conventional war that is already begun or is about to begin. i think we re already in the early stages of it around donbas, connecting crimea to donbas. that s putin s objective. but simultaneously, he will continue to terrorize ukrainian people as he did in lviv. as he did in kharkiv as you just showed. he will continue that part of the war as well and that s by design. those are not mistakes. he is designing, he is doing on purpose this terrorist actions against ukrainian innocence civilians. my colleague, rachel maddow, who s back on mondays now and accused last night and interviewed ann applebalm. of course, rachel being rachel pulled out the essence of what president zelenskyy said that
people, some of whom even speak their own language. right. to your point of bitterness and putin s bitterness and maybe tapping into some bitterness among his population, i wonder how this sort of amps that up, katty. this is from the a.p. president zelenskyy has formally submitted ukraine s answers to a questionnaire from the european union, the first step in his campaign to obtain accelerated eu membership. the european commission president said when presenting the questions to zelenskyy in early april that a preliminary decision on ukraine s candidacy could come in weeks. what impact will that have on not just putin and his bitterness but on ukraine? well, look, i mean, it s a preliminary decision, right? and when ursula van der leyen made this presentation, i think
have a very different concept of time, but this will be a big battle and as we ve been reporting, you ve been reporting, it will be a much more conventional style battle than this slaughtering of innocence we ve seen so far. there s no indication that those features will diminish as the brutality has been rewarded in russia, the soldiers who carried out the atrocities in bucha have been recognized by putin himself. i m sure that doesn t tell you anything new, but what should the rest of us take from that? honestly, nicolle, it does tell me something new. i wrote my first piece about putin becoming an autocrat 22 years ago. i did not expect him to be as evil in the way he is fighting this war and that he has been. let s also remember, they could have cleaned up bucha. they could have hid that. they didn t do that.
stuff. and remember, we don t really know the full extent of ukrainian casualties in the battle of kyiv and other places, right? ukrainian government tends not to publish that and my sense is that zelenskyy understands that this is going to be a major, difficult battle to repel these russian forces that are amassing, already are amassing inside his country. we re so eager to talk to you about what s happened in this moment between your appearances, but my last question is about what this is like for you. these players. i know you share with us sometimes when president zelenskyy zoom bombs some of your interactions with ukrainians. but this has to be emotional to see someone that you ve warned a lot of the west about. you ve counseled presidents on how to deal with putin and putin carrying out his evil.