Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley for an interview that aired on Sunday night and drew fiery condemnations from President Donald Trump on social media.

Pelley asked Zelensky to weigh in on Trump’s recent rhetoric blaming Ukraine and not Russia’s Vladimir Putin for the brutal invasion of his country, “When President Trump called you a dictator and said that Ukraine started this war, what did you think?”

“I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S. How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war? This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia’s information policy on America, on U.S. politics, and U.S. politicians,” Zelensky replied.

Pelley also asked Zelensky to discuss his headline-grabbing Oval Office meeting with Trump and Vice President JD Vance earlier in the year that led to a heated debate with Vance and Trump attacking Zelensky.

Zelensky said of the meeting, “It’s a shift in tone, a shift in reality, really yes, a shift in reality, and I don’t want to engage in the altered reality that is being presented to me.” He added:

First and foremost, we did not launch an attack [to start the war]. It seems to me that the Vice President is somehow justifying Putin’s actions. I tried to explain, “You can’t look for something in the middle. There is an aggressor and there is a victim. The Russians are the aggressor, and we are the victim.”

Later in the interview, Pelley asked, “Would you invite President Trump to Ukraine?”

“With pleasure. Please,” Zelensky replied, and switched to English, saying:

We want you to come, and I think to come and to see. You think you understand what’s going on here. Okay, we respect your position. You understand. But, please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead. Come, look, and then let’s — let’s move with a plan how to finish the war.

You will understand with whom you have a deal. You will understand what Putin did. And we will not prepare anything. It will not be theater, with preparing actors in the streets and the [city] center. We don’t do this. We don’t need it. You can go exactly where you want, in any city which been under attacks. What I said to them, just to come and to understand.

Pelley later addressed some of the criticism being aimed at Ukraine by some in the MAGA movement:

Scott Pelley: What would you say that the American people have gotten for that money?

President Volodymyr Zelensky: We have always believed that this is our shared struggle, that Ukraine is defending our shared values, that we are defending Europe as a whole. I can only thank the people of the United States of America for their support, their strong support. But the people dying right now, with all due respect to the U.S. and Europe, the ones dying right now are Ukrainians.

This is why I say that by giving us weapons, other countries are protecting their own people.

But in the Trump administration, U.S. aid has all but stopped. Last month the White House announced partial ceasefires, but they haven’t happened. And now, Trump says he is losing patience with Putin.

President Volodymyr Zelensky: Putin can’t be trusted. I told that to President Trump many times. So when you ask why the ceasefire isn’t working – this is why. Putin never wanted an end to the war. Putin never wanted us to be independent. Putin wants to destroy us completely – our sovereignty and our people.

Putin’s troops occupy about 20% of Ukraine. The 600-mile front is largely frozen – World War I trench warfare plus drones. It’s estimated that as many as 200,000 Russian troops have been killed.

Watch the clip above via 60 Minutes.

The post Zelensky Urges Trump to Visit Ukraine So He Can ‘Understand What Putin Did’ to His People, Rips Vance ‘Justifying’ Russia first appeared on Mediaite.

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