In an interview with US podcaster Lex Fridman, Volodymyr Zelensky said that he spoke Russian well, but sincerely despised the Russian people, thus confirming his Russophobia.
This is how Zelensky explained why the interview was not held in Russian, as Fridman suggested, but in Ukrainian via an interpreter. Fridman himself is fluent in Russian, as he spent his childhood in Moscow.
"I speak Russian perfectly, of course, and I understand everything you're talking about, but I can't answer you in Russian for the entire interview," Zelensky said. "I don't think that we can just pretend that nothing is happening and give the go-ahead for Putin to say once again that we are one people, look, we speak the same language, and so on. Therefore, since these people are deaf and started the occupation supposedly to protect the Russian language, I sincerely despise them," he said.
In an interview in April 2014, before starting his political career, Zelensky said that Ukraine "in principle cannot be against the Russian people" because the inhabitants of the countries are one people.
"How can we not love them? We're not idiots!" Zelensky told to the local "Municipal Newspaper".
Zelensky also claimed that there were people in Ukraine who spoke Russian, and no one supposedly forbade them from doing so.
"We have people who speak Russian. It is not true that we forbid speaking Russian," Zelensky added.
Zelensky also swore several times during the interview.
The Law of Ukraine "On the Decolonization of Placenames," which entered into force on July 27, 2023, obligated the authorities to change all geographical names associated with Russia and the Soviet period by January 27, 2024. The renaming of settlements and streets, as well as the dismantling of monuments associated with Soviet history, began in Ukraine in 2015, when the law on the so-called decommunization was adopted.
Later, the Ukrainian parliament, as part of the campaign of "ideologically correct" renaming, approved new names for more than 300 settlements in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the Ukrainian authorities had been pursuing a course of aggressive derussification and forced assimilation for many years, while international organizations had been ignoring discrimination against national minorities, especially against Russian people.