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Video taking off 129x its usual first day

Zelenskiy offers elections in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire

The ABC This Week excerpt on DRM News also carries his proposal for an energy truce, and has drawn far more viewers than the channel's Shorts usually do.

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 475,093 views a day, 129 times a normal first day on this channel (3,690).

“Don’t Play Games With People,” Zelenskiy Responds to Trump’s Call for New Ukraine President | AC1N“Don’t Play Games With People,” Zelenskiy Responds to Trump’s Call for New Ukraine President | AC1N

Donald Trump had said it was time for Ukraine to get a new president. Volodymyr Zelenskiy's reply sets a price for that: "Tell Putin, give us two months, 60 days of total ceasefire, 60 days, and we will organize elections."

The clip is not DRM News's own interview. It is a two-and-a-half-minute excerpt from ABC's This Week, still carrying the program's "exclusive" banner and an on-screen line quoting Trump's remark. DRM News posted it on Sunday. Within 13 hours it had about 340,000 views, while a typical Short on the channel draws a few thousand over its whole first day. The channel's other Sunday uploads, on Brazil's runoff campaign, the Riyadh airport attack and Pope Leo XIV's planned surgery, were still in the low thousands.

Zelenskiy keeps his answers short and pointed. Pressuring Ukraine is the easier option, he argues, "because it's more difficult to stop Putin than to pressure others." On high fuel prices, with a caption noting diesel near record highs, he points to the conflict in the Middle East rather than to Ukraine alone.

The line that gives the clip its title comes as he moves to a second offer. "Don't play games with people," he says, before laying out an energy ceasefire in which neither side attacks the other's power infrastructure. He asks Trump to signal to Moscow to stop striking Ukraine's grid, says Ukraine would halt its own strikes on Russian refineries in return, and sums it up in three words: "It's fair deal."

He closes on Ukraine's need to defend itself, and his belief that the truth is on its side.

Published on Trari

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The facts
Channel
DRM News
Subscribers
969,000 ▲ 6,000 this week
Channel views, last 7 days
6,424,181
Channel views, pace per day
2,842,024 (on a normal day: 1,098,387)
Video published
October 11, 2026
Video views so far
338,674 (less than a day online)
Video views, pace per day
475,093

The numbers

A news clip borrowed from a Sunday talk show has gone much further than DRM News's Shorts usually go.

the video's first day
usual first day here
3,690
this video
475,093
subscribers
969,000
▲ 6,000 in the last 7 days
total views
561,313,041
views per day
2,842,024
typical day: 1,098,387
the video
views
338,674
likes
5,086
comments
357
days online
1
subscribers: this channel and similar channels
WLA
1,040,000
DRM News
969,000
TLDR News
934,000
NPR
899,000
As of October 12, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube
Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.
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In which TV comedy did Volodymyr Zelenskiy play a teacher who unexpectedly becomes Ukraine's president?