Catch up quick: Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has addressed Western leaders and governments, pleading for more weapons and aid, while also calling on the international community to make the war as costly as possible for Vladimir Putin.
As fighting continues to escalate in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, Axios' Jonathan Swan will speak to Zelensky live on Monday.
Swan, who interviewed Zelensky in Kyiv in January 2021 for "Axios on HBO" — well before the current crisis erupted — recalled on Axios' "How it Happened podcast that "what he was really trying to get across in that interview with me is: pay attention. It was really a cry for the West to pay attention to this situation that was happening in his country."
"I was really struck by how alone he is."
"This is a man, and this is an administration that desperately wants to be part of the West, that really wants to be part of NATO. But they've been dragged along, slow-walked and basically rebuffed...You get a really visceral sense of how galling it is from their perspective."
