The gesture came on Thursday, as Ukraine’s president held what his office called a “marathon” press conference lasting more than 14 hours, with 300 journalists in attendance, which looked more like a forced march by the end.
In the space of a few weeks, he has faced protests over a controversial peace deal in Ukraine’s south-east, a lacklustre visit from the IMF and the resignation of a reformist cabinet member.
What was needed, his administration decided, was a grand gesture to recapture the narrative of a young, outsider president with a 70 per cent approval rating.
A telephone call with Donald Trump emerged last month, the news has been bad for the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy took questions at Kyiv food market in the refurbished Arsenal weapons factory, where he sat at a broad table next to a stall advertising “oysters and sparkling”.
The venue was carefully chosen to signal the administration’s openness. Eight hours into the event, a man in a vest bearing the word “expert” presented Zelenskiy with an award for holding the world’s longest press conference, an honour previously held by the leader of Belarus, according to Guardian UK report.
Over the course of the day, Zelenskiy told shifts of journalists he had not been blackmailed by Trump in their phone call on 25 July and did not know US military aid had been delayed at the time.
A White House summary of the call showed Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate business dealings by the family of his political rival Joe Biden in Ukraine, as well as claims the former vice-president had a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for looking into a company where his son worked. No evidence has shown Biden was motivated by his son’s work.
Zelenskiy said he was ready to investigate Ukraine’s role in the 2016 US elections if served with an official request by the US. He also said he knew he had needed to secure a meeting with Trump, saying US relations with Ukraine were “tired” and the Americans “wanted to know where their money had gone”.
But Zelenskiy’s main message to the US was: leave us out of it, the report noted.
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“Choose your own president yourself,” Zelenskiy told American reporters in an attempt to stake neutral ground in a Democratic impeachment inquiry. “And if possible, we ask you not to influence elections in a free Ukraine.”
Down below, journalists ate lunch at stalls with names such as Bali Bowl and Milk Bar as protesters and petitioners occasionally shouted up to Zelenskiy. One, the mother of a Ukrainian lawyer stabbed to death in 2017, demanded a proper investigation into the murder, and justice for her daughter.
Over the hours of questioning, Zelenskiy dodged queries about his relationship with the billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, and called ending the war with Russian-backed separatists in south-east Ukraine the most important goal of his presidency, Guardian UK reported.
The spectacle recalled a hallmark of another politician: Vladimir Putin’s marathon press conferences and Q&A sessions, controlled but flashy affairs primarily designed to show the Russian president’s transparency without putting him in danger of embarrassing himself.