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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky took a dig at Vladimir Putin during an interview in which he was asked about the prospect of a one-on-one fight with the Russian president.
Zelensky was speaking with Darius Rochebin from news channel La Chaine Info (LCI) in an wide-ranging interview about the war and how Ukrainians were dealing with Russian strikes on energy infrastructure in the middle of winter.
When asked if there was a "personal hatred" from Putin towards him, Zelensky replied that Putin had an image that was "not very positive of my personality and my role as president of Ukraine."
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In what the LCI described as a "lighter moment," Zelensky, who has not left Ukrainian territory since the start of the war, was pressed on whether Putin had animus towards him and what form this might take.
"A man, a real one, if he wants to send a message to someone, like if he wants to beat him up, well, he does that on his own, without resorting to the services of an intermediary," Zelensky said. "If I had a message of this kind to convey to Putin, I would do it alone."
Rochebin asked if this meant he was up for "single combat", prompting a smiling Zelensky to respond, "always ready, yes."
The clip was tweeted by Belarusian media outlet Nexta with the message that th Ukrainian president had said "he was ready to 'punch Putin in the face,'" although these words were not used in the excerpt of the interview which aired in full on Friday.
In his nightly address on Friday, Zelensky referred to how the European Union had approved a ninth package of sanction against Russia but that it was "obvious that the pressure needs to be increased."
He said that Kyiv would work with the EU to ensure that existing sanctions policy "does not give Russia wrong signals...that someone is ready to ease the pressure."
He added there were emergency power outages in most cities and regions following further attacks by Russian missiles on Ukrainian infrastructure.
Meanwhile, a request by Zelensky to share a video message of world peace before the kick off at the World Cup final on Sunday has been rebuffed by FIFA, according to CNN.
Zelensky has appeared via video to parliaments around the world, the Group of 20 Nations summit, the Grammys and the Cannes Film Festival. Along with the "spirit of Ukraine," Zelensky was named, Time magazine's "2022 Person of the Year."
Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment.
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