KYIV, Ukraine — President Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky may have more in common than meets the eye, the Ukrainian president suggested Wednesday in an exclusive interview with The Post.
“First of all, we are the choice of our people … and we definitely share the same values with our people,” Zelensky said of the similarities between himself and Trump during a sit-down in Kyiv.
Those shared American-Ukrainian values include a desire to defend freedom, family and the homeland, the 47-year-old explained.
“I think that every American would defend his or her family with arms. Every single one of them,” Zelensky said, noting that the “priceless” normality of Ukrainian life, including things as simple as family dinners, has been “taken away” since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
“I think that these are absolutely clear things. Our most important values, family things — I think the American people perceive it the same way, and that’s why the American people support Ukraine,” he continued.
“Despite the distance, there is no difference between these values and approaches to life. There are different identities, different customs, different traits … different countries … but I think they have the same values.”
When pressed on specific similarities between himself and Trump, 79, Zelensky initially chuckled.
“With me?” the former entertainer and co-founder of a successful television production company responded, before drawing parallels with the American commander in chief.
“I’m a very lively person,” Zelensky said.
“I think that you have to be as energetic as possible. You have to keep your energy up. You can never pass, you have to win. I think these are things and signals that President Trump understands.
“I’m that kind of person, and it was absolutely clear [after Russia’s invasion] that we’re not going anywhere, no one is going to go away, and we’re going to take the fight, and we’re going to stand to the end,” he declared.
The Ukrainian leader, who, like Trump, was a political outsider with no bureaucratic experience before being elected president in the spring of 2019, also signaled that his way of thinking and solving problems mirrored his US counterpart’s.
“I don’t work in a linear way, and I don’t answer in a completely linear way,” Zelensky said, attributing that to his business experience.
“I don’t have a lot of bureaucratic experience in business, although I have been president for many years, but, nevertheless, I came from business, where you make decisions very quickly,” he added.
“Sometimes you need to take a hit … It’s also very important to always be on your feet.
“I think this business experience … is very clear to President Trump, and it is also very clear to me.”
Zelensky cited Ukraine’s business-like, rather than bureaucratic, approach to ramping up drone production as something Trump might appreciate.
“We had nothing, and Russia hit us with a lot of missiles and artillery,” he said. “We had to find a different approach.”
He touted that under his leadership, Ukraine has “built a drone industry … outside of all bureaucratic formats.”
“When we started to produce, I opened up a lot of different things to the private sector, and from almost zero private sector involvement in defense, we have reached 70% today,” Zelensky said.
He indicated that his previous life as an entrepreneur in the post-Soviet Union mediaspace in Ukraine taught him “how to react quickly, on a daily basis.”
“You don’t look at bureaucratized processes, that can take months. It’s impossible to fight for yourself that way,” he asserted.
“It is definitely impossible to stand and definitely impossible to win. It’s just not possible.”
