President Joe Biden told donors at a fundraising event in Los Angeles on Friday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. officials warned him of the Feb. 24 Russian invasion. “Nothing like this has happened since World War II,” Biden said, according to the Associated Press. “I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain [Putin] was going to go in, off the border. There was no doubt, and Zelensky didn’t want to hear it,” he said. In response, Zelensky’s spokesperson Serhiy Nykyforov told Ukrainian news website LIGA.net that Zelensky spoke with Biden three or four times before the invasion, and Ukraine had called for preventive sanctions but Western allies “didn’t want to hear us.” Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak also expressed his dislike for Biden’s phrasing, telling the news outlet it was “absurd to blame a country that for more than 100 days has effectively been fighting in a full-scale war against a much more resourceful opponent, if the key countries weren’t able to preventatively stop the militaristic appetites of Russia, knowing them perfectly well.”
