President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin understands his position that Ukraine is an independent country.

Answering a question in an interview with The Times of Israel whether Putin still believes, as he said earlier, that "Ukraine is not a country," Zelensky said: "I don't know what he's [Putin] thinking about. He didn't tell me. I think he understands my attitude: Ukraine is an independent country. We are a big country, the biggest in Europe. I think he understands. What he thinks about it? That's in his head," he said.

Zelensky indicated that he had begun a dialogue with the President of Russia, there were also several phone calls, and a meeting in the Normandy format took place.

"We constructed a format for our dialogue that resulted in some sensitive decisions. We have returned our prisoners, our ships. After three years without meetings, we managed to agree on the Normandy Format. After that, there was a second exchange of prisoners — the biggest such exchange," he noted.