President Joe Biden said on Friday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not want to listen to US intelligence indicating that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. Biden made the remarks while speaking to donors in Los Angeles, California, about continuing his support for Ukraine, according to the Associated Press. “Nothing like this has happened since World War II. I know a lot of people thought I might have gone too far,” Biden was quoted as saying. He added that the United States had evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was going to invade. “There was no doubt,” Biden continued. “And Zelensky did not want to hear it.” Before launching a full-scale invasion on February 24, Russia spent weeks building its troops on the Ukrainian border, prompting speculation as to whether or not it was preparing to invade, a claim the Kremlin has denied. In late January, after US officials said Putin was likely to invade soon, a Ukrainian official told CNN that Zelensky had told Biden to “calm down the messages” about the invasion because it was creating panic. On Monday, the director of the US National Intelligence Service, Avril Haines, said that Biden even declassified information about the Russian invasion in an attempt to convince the skeptical allies that it was actually going to happen. Since the start of the war, the United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, including thousands of weapons. Ukraine has successfully prevented invasions of some of its largest cities, including the capital Kiev and Kharkiv, but fighting continues in the eastern Donbass region, where Russian forces have regrouped.
