If authorities had warned Ukrainians about upcoming invasion of Russian Federation back in October, Ukraine would have held out for three days, - Zelensky
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, Ukraine has been losing from $5 to $7 billion every month. The country would not have been able to sustain such expenses if the general public had learned about the plans of the Russian Federation back in October.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said this in an interview with The Washington Post, Censor.NET reports.
"If we had reported this (Russia's plans for a full-scale invasion. - Ed.) - and some people, whom I will not name, wanted to do this - then I would have lost 7 billion dollars a month, starting last October, and at the moment , when the Russians attacked, they would have captured us for three days," he said.
According to Zelensky, the authorities' silence about the Russians' plans made it possible to avoid mass emigration and, in general, to hold the country together.
"If that had happened, then in October - God forbid, in the heating season - there would be nothing left. Our government would not exist, I am 100 percent sure. Well, forget about us. There would be a political war inside the country, because we would not have been able to hold on to 5-7 billion dollars a month. We did not have serious financial programs. There was a shortage of energy carriers in the market created by the Russians. We did not have enough energy resources. We would not have been able to get out of this situation, and the country would have been in chaos", he said.
Zelensky added that if the state can still cope with chaos in wartime, it is not a fact that it would have succeeded in peacetime.
"It's one thing when chaos is controlled in wartime - you run the state in a different way. You can open the border, close the border, attack, retreat, defend. You can take control of your infrastructure. It's another situation when you don't have a military situation or state of emergency, and you have a state run by a huge number of different officials and institutions. And minus 7 billion dollars a month, even without weapons, this is already a big war for our country," he said.
Zelensky also noted that throughout December, January and February, Ukrainians withdrew money from the economy. At the same time, according to him, the authorities did not limit this opportunity, respecting people's economic freedom.
