Zelensky knew that......but Putin needs a quick victory in order to win and Zelensky needs to delay him hoping that the world will step up including the Russian people against Putin.
Biden's ******* handlers know that and so does biden on some days. Biden and PUTIN together, both of their asses, were trying to get the ukrainians to not fight back to just quickly fold over without a battle making it much easier for Putin to take over QUICKLY and thusly pretend all was fine with him invading and seizing ukraine as Putin had already done before with another little nation. PUTIN, CHINA, and BIDEN don't want people fighting back and thus wanting to scare the Ukrainians into just laying down and letting Putting take them over.