Letterman’s craziest show: with Selenskyj in Kiev metro station Terror suspect in Nice trial: ‘I am not a terrorist’

The scenery is almost unbelievable, but cleverly staged. American talk show host David Letterman interviews Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in front of an audience in a Kiev subway station. Subway trains rumble past again and again. Then, after a few minutes of talking, the air raid sirens blare.

Stunned, Letterman asks his guest what they should do next. “Nothing!” the president replies and laughs. Letterman responds, “In any other circumstance I’d be concerned right now, but here with them I’m not.”

The 25th episode of Letterman’s Netflix talk show “My Next Guest” is definitely the craziest — but also the most important. It has been on the streaming service since Monday. In October, the 75-year-old American star presenter traveled with his team from Warsaw to Ukraine by train and, in addition to the approximately 40-minute presidential interview, also conducted numerous conversations with the population over the course of weeks.

In an interview, Zelensky resolutely confirmed that the war will not be over until Ukraine has recaptured all territories and restored borders. Merely freezing the conflict would be unfair to its own deeply sacrificial population. “Mighty help” from abroad is needed to shorten the war.

No war without Putin

The Russian people, on the other hand, consider Zelensky cowardly because they do not question the brainwashing of the Kremlin regime, do not even want to know the truth about the war, believe in everything Putin and hide within their own four walls. “But there are also those who know the truth and are just afraid.” Yet one should not hate the enemy, because that makes the difference between being able to remain human in war and becoming an animal.

As the conversation progressed, Zelensky became convinced that the war would not continue without Putin, as he held absolute power in totalitarian Russia. There can be no democratic turnaround among his enemies until “the Russians realize how isolated they are”.

The only way out of this isolation is to respect international law, because “nobody wants to have anything to do with Russia anymore, not in sport or culture”. According to Zelenskiy, the only correct response from the international community is not to shake hands with the Russians in any sense of the word.

«Laughter helps us not to go crazy»

In addition to these war ideas, the 75-year-old star presenter, who now has a long beard, also elicits a lot of personal information in the tried and tested speaking style. There are grins and laughter in between, and Selenskyj even tells a joke. «Laughter helps us not to go crazy»he explains, “As in Soviet times, humor inspires us to move on and raise our children.”

Five weeks after the interview, Letterman from New York asked via video call. Heavy Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and power plants continue. In his closing statement, Zelensky accused the Russian president, who never mentioned Putin by name, of a serious calculation error.

“The more he attacks our dignity and integrity, and unfairly attacks it, the more the people of Ukraine want to gain to protect their integrity.” 98 percent of all Ukrainians would rather remain without electricity and water than be occupied by Russia, says Volodymyr Zelenskyj with conviction.