- Our reserves are depleted.
We need more anti-aircraft weapons and we need more grenade launchers for armored vehicles, including the Swedish Carl Gustaf who is excellent at stopping Russian tanks.
I want to thank the Swedish people and the Swedish government for your help, says Petro Poroshenko to Aktuellt.
The former president, who is currently in Kyiv where he is participating in a civil defense force, is also urging the Western world to send Polish Mig-19 planes.
There are concerns that such aid would escalate the conflict and lead to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia and thus a third world war.
A concern Poroshenko does not share.
- It would be about Ukrainian pilots who would have Ukrainian training, we only need the Polish planes.
We do not need your soldiers, he says.
"He's a maniac"
According to Petro Poroshenko, who repeatedly met with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his presidency, the outside world should not trust what the Russian leader says.
- Quite honestly, I think he's a maniac, and he's a maniac with nuclear weapons.
Do not trust Putin, he only understands one language and that is raw strength, he says.
Poroshenko was president of Ukraine between 2014 and 2019, when he was succeeded by Volodymyr Zelensky.
On December 17 last year, he was charged with involvement in a tangle where large quantities of coal were sold to finance Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014-2015.
The charges are that he made it possible to finance terrorism, for having been involved in founding a terrorist organization and for treason
Poroshenko has previously dismissed the allegations against him, saying that his successor is trying to discredit him and shift the focus from domestic political failures.
In an opinion poll in February 2022, Poroshenko's party received European solidarity 17.1 percent, making the party the country's second largest