President Zelenskyy: It's Time To Tell You The Truth About The War! They Found 500 Bodies!

Episode Overview

• In this episode of The Diary Of A CEO (a Flightstory Show, with no commercial sponsors or external funding disclosures made during the segment), host Steven Bartlett—who discloses he has been running businesses and startups since age 18 and asks viewers to subscribe—interviews Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the human, historical, and geopolitical realities of the war in Ukraine.
• Zelenskyy traces his personal background from a "not very well off" academic family in Soviet-era Kryvyi Rih (where his father was a professor) to graduating from law school, joining a comedy group at 17, founding his own media company at 26 as a scriptwriter, actor, and comedian, winning Ukraine's Dancing with the Stars at 28, voicing Paddington Bear (and declining an offer to voice the sequel after becoming president), and starring as a history teacher who accidentally becomes president in Servant of the People (an idea 10 to 12 years old) between ages 34 and 37.
• The conversation explores the deep historical roots of the conflict, refuting Russian historical revisionism with Ukraine's 1,000-year heritage, Zelenskyy's family history in WWII, and an analysis of how autocratic empires rely on an information vacuum to survive.
• Zelenskyy recounts the timeline of pre-invasion intelligence, the failure of Western pre-emptive deterrence, the first 20 days of crisis management inside his Kyiv bunker following the February 24, 2022 invasion, the pivotal Battle of Hostomel Airport, and the atrocities uncovered in Bucha.
• The discussion concludes with an assessment of the current battlefield map, the psychological toll of the war on Zelenskyy and his family, and direct responses to Donald Trump's recent statements regarding Russian tank movements, Ukrainian strikes on Russian diesel refineries, and US air defense support.

Key Concepts

• The Psychological and Human Toll of Wartime Leadership: Over almost 5 years of war, getting 8 hours of sleep is totally new to Zelenskyy; in the first days of the 2022 invasion, he slept only about 50 minutes a day, and he currently texts and speaks every night with Ukrainian air defense operators to move assets between regions. The emotional weight is compounded by witnessing missile strikes—such as a playground strike so fast sirens did not help, where parents watched their children "torn apart" through their windows, leaving Zelenskyy with pain he claims is "not even 10% of the parents' pain"—and presenting the "Hero of Ukraine" award to grieving parents, during which he feels he "ceases to exist." This constant crisis mode means that even when his wife and children are sitting right next to him, he misses them because his mind is entirely consumed by survival, while his mother still lives in Ukraine and calls him daily, sometimes leaving 12 missed calls until he answers.
• Historical Revisionism vs. Historical Reality: Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the February 2022 invasion by claiming modern Ukraine was created by Bolshevik Communist Russia after 1917 ("Vladimir Lenin's Ukraine") and needed "liberating" from fascists. Zelenskyy refutes this by noting Ukraine is the heir to Kyivan Rus with 1,000-year-old churches painted by Ukrainians, and that during WWII, Ukraine and Belarus were occupied "100% completely" by Nazi Germany while Russia was not occupied. Furthermore, Zelenskyy's own paternal grandfather fought through WWII from start to finish and was the sole surviving brother after his brothers and many relatives on both sides of the family were killed by Nazis/fascists.
• The "Fish Tank" Theory of Autocratic Empires: Empires like the Soviet Union cannot survive on freedom; they require an Iron Curtain where citizens live like "fish in a fish tank" (with the USSR being a massive tank and North Korea a smaller one), unable to see how free people live. In the USSR, Ukraine was "country number two" and the intellectual and industrial "forge of talent" (housing scientists, engineers, universities, rocket manufacturing, and nuclear weapons). Zelenskyy argues that if Ukraine integrates into Europe, Russia will collapse into many different countries, which is why Ukraine's democratic trajectory posed an existential threat to Moscow's autocratic model.
• The Failure of Appeasement and Pre-Emptive Deterrence: Zelenskyy discloses that prior to 2014, his media business operated in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, but he dropped it all after Russia occupied Crimea and Donbas. He contrasts 2014—when Russia took Crimea (population 3 million) with "dozens of people... at most hundreds" because Ukraine did not fight back—with 2022, when Russia failed to take Kyiv (also population 3 million) despite sending hundreds of thousands of troops, because Ukrainians resisted. Despite a clear US intelligence timeline (October 2021 briefings and satellite imagery of 100,000 troops, tanks, and field hospitals; the CIA Director flying to Moscow in November 2021; December 2021 declassified maps predicting up to 175,000 troops; and late Jan/early Feb 2022 warnings), and despite Belarus inviting Ukraine's Defense Minister to observe annual joint military drills with Russia right before the attack launched from Belarusian territory, President Biden refused Zelenskyy's request for pre-emptive sanctions and weapons, opting only for post-factum measures.
• The Myth of the "3-Day War" and the Defense of Kyiv: When missiles struck at 4:00 AM on February 24, 2022, Russia had assembled between 150,000 and 190,000 (up to 200,000) troops on the border, with total Russian presence across all directions on Ukrainian territory reaching around 700,000 ("probably at that moment"). Ukraine's pre-war army was under 200,000 (which Zelenskyy had legally increased to 200,000–250,000), and grew via volunteers and mobilization to 800,000. Russian assault units carried only 3 to 10 days of rations alongside formal dress uniforms for a victory parade on Khreshchatyk (Independence Square), and Russian state media accidentally published a victory declaration on Day 3. However, at the Battle of Hostomel (Antonov) Airport, Ukrainian forces shelled and destroyed their own runway to prevent Russian transport planes from landing; Zelenskyy agrees that had Russia held Hostomel, they likely would have taken most of Kyiv. Furthermore, Zelenskyy refutes a Newsmax clip from 12 hours prior in which Donald Trump claimed the war would have ended in one day if a Russian general hadn't made a right turn into muddy farmland after the heaviest rain in 10 years (referring to the period when a 64-kilometer/40-mile Russian convoy backed up toward Kyiv). Zelenskyy explains that Russian armor did breach Kyiv's streets, where civilians and soldiers burned hundreds of vehicles with Molotov cocktails, and estimates Russia would have needed 300,000 to 400,000 troops just to take and hold the capital.
• Bucha and Why a Ceasefire is Already a Compromise: Following the liberation of Bucha, Zelenskyy ordered nothing be touched and invited the global press to witness where around 500 people (adults, children, and elderly) were found in a mass grave/pits with hands tied after being tortured and subjected to sexual violence, alongside Russian looting of microwaves, refrigerators, and TVs, and "hunting sprees" shooting at civilians and dogs. Because of such atrocities—which a local WWII survivor told Zelenskyy were worse than the Nazi occupation—Zelenskyy explains that simply agreeing to a ceasefire and sitting at a negotiating table without exacting justice or revenge is already a massive compromise for Ukrainians.
• Territorial Realities, Nuclear Risk, and the Geopolitics of Energy: Nowadays, "a thousand drones fly in, and we shoot them down," while missile strikes continue across Lutsk, Zhytomyr, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, and near Pryluky/Kyiv (where Zelenskyy and the British Secretary recently saw 23 people killed). Russia currently occupies roughly 18% to 19% of Ukraine (leaving 2,500 people, including children, trapped without food in Oleshky, Kherson region), and demands Ukraine surrender heavily reinforced eastern cities (Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka), which would open a path into the industrial hub of Dnipropetrovsk (Pavlohrad, Kryvyi Rih, Nikopol). While Zelenskyy "doesn't think" Putin will risk using nuclear weapons because Russia would lose all remaining allies like China and the US (though caveating Putin will hold onto power until the end of his life), he remains uncertain about US politics. He hedges that "nobody knows the answer, honestly" as to whether the war would have started under Trump—acknowledging it happened under Biden (though forgetting the exact date of the 2021 Biden-Putin summit) and that "maybe, it really is possible" Trump's relationship delayed it, though Putin's goal remained outlasting any US term—and hedges ("I don't know. Honestly, I don't know... I can only guess—some economic deals and so on") on why Trump won't sanction Putin. However, Zelenskyy firmly refutes Trump's White House lawn claim that Ukrainian strikes on Russian diesel refineries hurt US farmers, ranchers, and global prices, and addresses Trump's suggestion that Ukraine needs a new president (which Bartlett notes contradicts surveys showing 76% of Ukrainians do not want an election right now). Zelenskyy states Russian diesel exports have "100%" zero impact on US prices, argues Trump is deflecting blame from energy blocked in the Strait of Hormuz due to the Iran/Middle East crisis, and reveals he offered Trump two choices: broker a mutual energy ceasefire with Putin (which Putin refused) or sell Ukraine Patriot air defense missiles funded entirely by Europe to protect Ukraine's grid—which the US refused, sending the missiles to the Middle East instead.

Quotes

• At 0:04:24 - "That's when a missile hit a playground. And the missile speed was such that the siren didn't help at all. So it was a matter of seconds. And the missile struck and children were killed, and both children were killed there, mostly, and adults, just adults right there." - Zelenskyy describing the speed and human devastation of a Russian missile strike on a civilian residential area.
• At 0:06:51 - "I'll be honest, I don't sleep. I'm a responsible person. I have different traits, good ones, not so good ones, like every person, nobody's perfect. Yeah, and every night I speak with our air defense operators, with our guys who run the air defense." - Zelenskyy explaining his nightly routine coordinating air defense movements and his chronic sleep deprivation over nearly five years of war.
• At 0:08:02 - "When I present this award to parents who lost a child, yeah, a boy or a girl, soldiers, that feeling, you know, well, how—I cease to exist in that moment. I'm just, well, it's not even—it's not pain, it's something terrible." - Zelenskyy sharing the emotional toll of presenting the "Hero of Ukraine" medal to the parents of fallen soldiers.
• At 0:17:06 - "A person from the people, without any history, without any political background, becomes president. And that's how it turned out, to be honest." - Zelenskyy reflecting on how the premise of his satirical television show Servant of the People mirrored his actual rise to the presidency.
• At 0:21:18 - "The war really started with the occupation of Crimea. That's true. It's just that it was slow, that occupation. It didn't look much like a war. Why? Well, because Ukraine wasn't fighting back at that point." - Zelenskyy explaining why the 2014 annexation of Crimea unfolded quietly compared to the 2022 full-scale invasion.
• At 0:23:37 - "And that's why it always sounded so bizarre when Russia accused us, Ukraine, of supposedly having Nazis. It's bizarre and completely wild. If people all knew even a little bit of history, they would realize that fascists in Ukraine, fascism as such doesn't exist." - Zelenskyy refuting Putin's "denazification" narrative by pointing to Ukraine's complete occupation by Nazi Germany in WWII and his own family's losses to fascism.
• At 0:26:12 - "Empires don't survive on freedom. And this is very important. Why do empires fall apart? Because people want to be free." - Zelenskyy diagnosing why Ukraine's democratic and European aspirations posed a threat to Moscow.
• At 0:27:14 - "People live like fish in a fish tank. That's all it is. The fish tank can be massive like the Soviet Union, but it's still a fish tank. North Korea is a smaller fish tank, but it's a fish tank." - Zelenskyy illustrating how authoritarian regimes rely on an information vacuum and closed borders to control their populations.
• At 0:34:19 - "Your country's history can't start in 1917. In Ukraine there are churches, everyone knows we have very beautiful churches that are a thousand years old, Ukrainian churches painted by Ukrainians, total master professionals, a thousand years old. Ukraine is—it's the heir to Kyivan Rus." - Zelenskyy dismantling Vladimir Putin's claim that modern Ukraine was artificially created by Vladimir Lenin after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
• At 0:41:05 - "I asked President Biden: impose sanctions on Russia now, pre-emptively. If you know there could be an invasion, impose sanctions... But President Biden said we'll impose sanctions if there's an invasion. Post-factum, not pre-emptive sanctions, but post-factum." - Zelenskyy detailing his failed attempt to secure pre-emptive deterrence from the United States prior to February 24, 2022.
• At 0:46:27 - "I told my wife, wake up quickly, the war has started. I love you, I'll call you, and ran out." - Zelenskyy recounting the exact moment the full-scale invasion began around 4:00 AM on February 24, 2022.
• At 0:52:41 - "People showed up as volunteers, and our army grew from 200,000 to an army of 800,000, while the Russian presence was around, by the way, the Russian presence was around 700, probably at that moment around 700,000 across all directions on Ukrainian territory." - Zelenskyy providing the troop numbers for both Ukrainian mobilization and total Russian forces across all fronts.
• At 0:56:02 - "I need ammunition, not a ride." - Zelenskyy repeating his response to President Joe Biden and European leaders when they called to offer him and his family evacuation from Kyiv.
• At 1:06:24 - "When our guys hit their tanks and stuff, we found parade uniforms. It's true, they found parade uniforms in their various military vehicles. They were literally marching to a parade. They specifically wanted to capture Kyiv in three days and symbolically hold some, well, some kind of regular spectacle of pseudo-victory on Khreshchatyk, on Independence Square." - Zelenskyy confirming intelligence reports that Russian assault units packed formal dress uniforms expecting a three-day capitulation of Kyiv.
• At 1:18:38 - "This elderly man, he survived the occupation of this town, the town of Bucha, during World War II. And he said the fascists never treated people like that. Yes, they were enemies, yes, occupiers, but they didn't torture people like that." - Zelenskyy recounting a conversation with a WWII survivor following the discovery of mass graves and torture in Bucha.
• At 1:20:06 - "A ceasefire and sitting down at the negotiating table is a huge compromise. It is a huge compromise. Nobody can step into the shoes of all these people and the relatives whose children were tortured. Nobody wants to forgive them for anything." - Zelenskyy challenging the international view that compromise only means territorial concessions, explaining the psychological cost of halting the war without justice.
• At 1:35:26 - "All of this is, all of this is roughly 18 to 19 percent of our territory." - Zelenskyy using a table map to mark the current extent of Russian territorial occupation in Ukraine.
• At 1:44:39 - "You can't force Putin to stop the war and make an energy truce? Give me air defense missiles. I won't fire at anyone, I'll protect our energy sector. So where am I being unfair? In what way? I asked him, give us missiles. Not for free, again, not even for free. Europeans are funding this, funding all of it." - Zelenskyy explaining the proposal he made to Donald Trump to protect Ukraine's power grid using European-funded US missiles rather than retaliating against Russian diesel refineries.

Takeaways

• Apply pre-emptive deterrence rather than post-factum punishment: When intelligence clearly indicates an adversary is preparing an attack, impose sanctions and supply defensive capabilities before the strike occurs to alter the aggressor's calculus, rather than waiting to punish them after the damage is done.
• Counter disinformation with immediate, visible leadership: In a crisis where adversaries attempt to sow panic by claiming leadership has fled, use direct, verifiable communication—just as Zelenskyy walked out onto Bankova Street 2 to 3 times a day while gunfire echoed nearby to film videos proving he remained in Kyiv.
• Preserve untouched evidence to combat information warfare: When confronting severe atrocities or war crimes, immediately secure the site, order that nothing be touched, and invite independent international media to document the reality firsthand so the perpetrator cannot credibly deny it.
• Evaluate military capability by popular resistance, not just troop columns: Do not assume numerical superiority or armored convoys guarantee victory; factor in the local population's willingness to resist (such as citizens and soldiers using Molotov cocktails and expanding an army from 200,000 to 800,000 volunteers).
• Make hard tactical sacrifices to deny the enemy strategic footholds: Be prepared to destroy your own critical infrastructure when necessary to prevent an existential breach, exemplified by Ukrainian forces shelling their own runway at Hostomel Airport to stop Russian transport planes from landing and taking Kyiv.
• Recognize the true nature of compromise in post-atrocity negotiations: When evaluating peace talks, understand that for a traumatized population, simply agreeing to a ceasefire and sitting at a table with an invader without securing justice is already a profound concession.
• Look past strategic buffer zones to protect core economic hubs: Never cede fortified frontline cities (like Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Druzhkivka) in exchange for empty promises, as doing so strips away natural and military defenses and exposes vital industrial and economic heartlands (like the Dnipropetrovsk region).
• Fact-check political scapegoating in global energy markets: Verify supply chain data before accepting political narratives; recognize when leaders deflect blame for domestic fuel prices away from actual bottlenecks (such as the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East) by falsely blaming retaliatory strikes on negligible export sources.
• Pair diplomatic demands with practical defensive alternatives: If an ally demands you stop retaliatory strikes against an enemy's revenue and energy infrastructure, offer a clear, actionable choice: either broker a mutual energy truce with the aggressor, or sell the defensive tools (like European-funded Patriot missiles) needed to protect your own grid.
• Guard against the psychological compartmentalization of chronic crisis: Recognize that prolonged high-stakes leadership can trap the mind in survival mode—causing you to miss loved ones even when they are in the same room—and consciously work to stay connected to family anchors, such as answering daily check-ins from loved ones.