Bill Clinton: Zelensky has been ‘amazing’

Former President Clinton on Thursday said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been “amazing” in leading his country through four weeks of Russian attacks.

“He’s been resolute. He’s been energetic, and he’s been sort of upbeat in this but brutally, brutally honest about what they are facing,” Clinton added on CBS.

“It’s a very difficult time for people who are pulling for Ukraine because you read about all this suffering and all these people that have been killed by the indiscriminate bombing to which the Russians have resorted when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin didn’t get them to roll over and just become another province of Russia,” Clinton also said, adding that Putin “basically thought that once he roughed them up a little they would fold.”

Zelensky has received widespread international praise for his leadership during the invasion. A Ukrainian poll earlier this month showed 85 percent of respondents at least partially supported him. 

The Ukrainian president this week has continued his appeals for global support of his country. 

“Come to your squares, your streets. Make yourselves visible and heard,” Zelensky said in an address recorded in Kyiv. “Say that people matter. Freedom matters. Peace matters. Ukraine matters.”

He also spoke in Russian, asking Russian people “to leave Russia so as not to give your tax money to the war.”

Clinton on Thursday also provided an update on his wife, former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, after she tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week.

“She’s feeling alright, but we’re going to be fine. I just hope that the Ukrainians will be fine,” Clinton said to CBS.

“We’ve been more interested in Ukraine and Madeleine Albright than we have in her infection, because it just made her tired, but she was fully vaccinated, had her booster,” he added.