A foreign “friend of Ukraine” urged Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to record his last will in the early stages of the conflict with Russia, former Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has claimed.
The diplomat has detailed a number of exchanges he had with Western officials and politicians shortly after the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022. His interview was included in a documentary which the Ukrainian TV channel TSN released on Thursday.
Kuleba cited a senior US official who suggested that in an “optimistic scenario,” the Ukrainian government would retain control over a small part of the country. Another interlocutor urged him not to return to Ukraine from a foreign trip, saying: “you would be killed there.” As the foreign minister, he would be needed to rally up foreign support for his country, the person said.
Another individual who Kuleba described as a “big friend of Ukraine” asked him whether he was going to Kiev.
”I said I did. And he said, in that case Zelensky should record a video-will, just in case, to be kept somewhere,” the former minister said.
Kuleba claimed that the US only started supporting Kiev in earnest in March 2022, because previously Washington expected it to lose quickly.
The US pledged to support Kiev “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia. President Joe Biden considers the policy one of the key achievements of his administration.
”[Russian President Vladimir] Putin thought he’d take Kiev in three days. Three years later, Ukraine is still free,” he declared in August at the Democratic National Convention.
Moscow has called the Ukraine conflict a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainians serve as ‘cannon fodder’.