HOW THE FIGHTING ENDS

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks out on Trump, Putin, and the price of peace

- Simon Shuster

NEARLY SIX YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE, Yet he still cringes at all the polished brass and chandeliers that crowd his office. The place does seem rather gaudy, like a room plucked straight from Mar-a-Lago, and Zelensky can’t seem to stop apologizing for it as he shows me around one evening in March. He would rather scrap the furniture, he says, rip down the pilasters, and use white paint to hide the gold leaf on the ceiling.

“But, you know, we haven’t had much time for renovations, especially these last few years,” he says, referring to the war. Only in the back of his chambers, behind Ukraine’s version of the Resolute Desk, is there a space that feels like home to Zelensky—a small room with a single bed and a set of paintings that he chose himself. They are not museum pieces. At the local bazaar, similar ones might fetch a few hundred dollars at most. But they matter to the President because of what they represent.

The one that hangs above his bed shows a Russian warship sinking into the Black Sea. Another shows Ukrainian troops fighting recently on Russian territory. The third, Zelensky’s favorite, shows the Kremlin engulfed in flames. “Each one’s about victory,” he says as we cram into the space for a look at the pictures. “That’s where I live.”

But he did not invite me over for a tour. His basic aim, as far as I could tell, was to clear the air after his recent visit to the Oval Office, the one that became a viral sensation for the world and a source of trepidation for his country. For several interminable minutes on the morning of Feb. 28, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance had berated Zelensky, calling him ungrateful, weak, and dangerous while talking over his attempts to argue back. “You don’t hold the cards,” Trump told Zelensky. “You're gambling with World War III!”