Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sarcastically brushed off a brusque Russian “propagandist”, warning he’d be riding a missile to Moscow.
A Russian state media journalist caught up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday afternoon as the leader walked alongside the United Nations General Assembly building in New York. Zelensky was giving answers to shouted journalists’ questions as the huddle passed the landmark bronze handgun statue outside the U.N. headquarters, when a Russian, repeatedly addressed the leader using a Russian form of his name.
The man shouted: “Vladimir Alexandrovich, when are we going to Moscow?” in Russian several times as Zelensky spoke to others. Eventually, the Ukrainian President replied in Russian with an aside over his shoulder, apparently annoyed by the haranguing, that he would come to Moscow, but “on a missile, blyat”.
‘Blyat’ is a common Russian expletive which might be taken to mean “whore”, “fuck”, or, most charitably, “damnit”. Germany’s Die Welt notes that Russia took exception to the blunt language and that this response “caused a stir”.
The Russian journalist has been identified in Ukrainian media as Moscow state media reporter Valentin Bogdanov. The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine’ Centre for Countering Disinformation says Bogdanov is one of the Kremlin’s “information saboteurs in the West” and a “Russian propagandist” for state media.
The terse exchange on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly is not the first time President Zelensky has parlayed questions about whether he would travel to Moscow for peace talks into a joke. As earlier reported when Zelensky met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the NATO Ankara summit in July, he laughed off the suggestion of going to Moscow by telling Trump: “It’s difficult, there are a lot of Ukrainian drones there”, prompting a ripple of laughter in the room.