President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky justified his refusal to openly prepare the country for war with Russia by saying he did not want to instill panic among the population. In an interview with the Washington Post, he said that as early as the fall of 2021, the United States had warned him about the planned invasion. Still, the Ukrainian authorities wanted to avoid an economic collapse and a mass exodus of people from the country.
"If we announced it, indeed some people, whom I will not name, wanted it, then I would lose 7 billion dollars a month, starting from October of last year, and the moment the Russians attacked us, they would have taken us in three days," Zelensky said in the interview.
