Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s message to Australia on 60 Minutes

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has delivered a very important message to our country from his secret war room.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has deliverd a message to Australia from inside his secret war room.

Channel 9 reporter Tom Steinfort. travelled to Ukraine to interview President Zelensky from inside his secret war room

President Zelensky had invited Steinfort “into his secret inner sanctum to explain the horror show that is this ongoing war”.

Steinfort spoke of the meeting on Twitter, saying it was “a great privilege to spend several days with President Zelensky”.

A great privilege to spend several days with President Zelensky - our report this Sunday on @60Minshttps://t.co/Qe2Nru9Ngb

— Tom Steinfort (@tomsteinfort) April 28, 2022

The 60 Minutes reporter met with 41-year-old Zelensky in what has been his home since the war began; a makeshift bunker.

President Zelensky, dressed in his uniform of army green fatigues, delivered a special message to Australia, saying his country will never forget the support we have offered Ukraine.

“I have to be very thankful to Australian people,” he said.

“You helped us already and it’s true but we need more, it’s also true.

“I’m sorry. I’m president of war country, country at war.

“With such friends like you, such respect friends, maybe my English is not good, I’m sorry dear Australian people I’m very sorry, but I think you understand my feelings, that is main thing.

“Ukraine will always remember. It will be written in our historical books about your help, thanks a lot.”

Zelensky had a message for Australia. Picture: 60 Minutes

The interview had started with a joke from Zelensky: “60 Minutes, so my question is not clever. How long it will be (laughs)?”

However the mood quickly become sombre. When asked about how it feels to have people wanting to kill him, he was more concerned about others.

“Well, that’s 10 assassination attempts, means that there’s only 10 people willing to have me killed,” Zelensky said.

“That’s not bad, when people are being tortured, when the bodies of people are found in the wells, I think, considering all of that, my situation is not that horrible, but I’m afraid for those people.”

The war has been agonising.

A look inside.

However the president, like so many of his countrymen and women, worries every day about his own family, wife and high school sweetheart Olena, and their two children – 17 year old daughter Oleksandra, and nine-year-old son Kyrylo.

They have fled Kyiv and are in hiding.

Reporter Steinfort met with Zelensky.

Zelensky later became visibly upset when talking about the atrocities that took place in Bucha, a town 45 minutes from Kyiv where Russian soldiers butchered townsfolk.

There were images of locals with arms tied behind their backs shot in the head, women raped, an old man cycling had been executed, his feet hauntingly still on the pedals.

Steinfort asked: “What you saw in Bucha clearly cut you to your core. Do you have any doubt that Russian forces, at the command of President Putin, are committing war crimes against your people?”

To which he responded: “Well, I felt pain. I felt, uh, an anger. I felt, a desire for revenge. And then after that came an lack of understanding, how could you do something to- to people, to- to- to humanity? How could you torture that many people?

“Look I’m not afraid to show some sort of weakness. You can lose your humanity and I want not to lose it.

“I want to keep my humanity and that is why I’m watching all of it, I’m looking at photos.

Getting used to a war, it’s the worst possible habit.”

Bodies lined the streets of Bucha. Picture: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP

Volodymyr Zelensky walked in the town of Bucha last month. Picture: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP

Devastatingly, the latest number of civilians murdered by Russian troops stands at nearly 3000 including 200 children.