Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired back at a Russian state media reporter outside the United Nations headquarters in New York on Wednesday, telling him he’d get to Moscow “on a missile, blyat.”
The exchange happened as Zelensky walked past the U.N. General Assembly building alongside a crowd of journalists shouting questions. A Russian reporter repeatedly called out to him using the Russian form of his name, shouting: “Vladimir Alexandrovich, when are we going to Moscow?”
Zelensky, appearing annoyed by the repeated needling, tossed the reply over his shoulder in Russian. “Blyat” is a common Russian expletive that can mean “whore,” “fuck,” or more mildly, “damnit.” Germany’s Die Welt reported that the blunt language “caused a stir” in Russia.
The reporter has been identified in Ukrainian media as Valentin Bogdanov, a journalist for Moscow state media. Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, part of the National Security and Defense Council, has described Bogdanov as one of the Kremlin’s “information saboteurs in the West” and a “Russian propagandist.”
This isn’t the first time Zelensky has turned aside questions about visiting Moscow with a joke rather than a straight answer. At the NATO summit in Ankara in July, when President Trump raised the idea of Zelensky traveling to Moscow for talks, Zelensky replied, “It’s difficult, there are a lot of Ukrainian drones there,” drawing laughter from the room.
