(Read the full article on Time.com)

“They want us to be afraid,” Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, says as his plane starts to descend, bringing him home from a trip to the war zone near his country’s border with Russia. He’s referring to the Russian troops that have massed along that border during the past two weeks, forcing the world to guess at the intentions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, TIME reported, citing an interview with Zelensky.

Zelensky has his own read on the Russian message. “They want the West to be frightened of Russia’s strength, of her power,” he says in a wide-ranging interview with TIME on April 9. “There’s no big secret here.”

That motive might help explain some of Moscow’s behavior. Had the Kremlin really set out to invade its neighbor, its troops might have tried a little harder (as they did during their last invasion of Ukraine, in 2014) to maintain some element of surprise. Instead the Russians have done the opposite. They have spread footage of their military build-up on social media. They have sent warships to menace Ukraine from the sea and gathered tens of thousands of troops at the border—the most since Russia’s annexation of Crimea seven years ago. Russia has warned the U.S. that support for Ukraine could spiral into a wider war. On state television, a Kremlin propagandist even suggested launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike that would, as he put it, scare the Americans off, Time reported.

But Zelensky, who entered politics only two years ago after a long career as a comedian, does not appear to be buying the bluster. “I want to get this straight,” he told TIME. “We are not claiming that there will be a real escalation. It might simply not be in anyone’s interests to have one.”

That doesn’t mean he is relaxed about the armies assembled at his doorstep, according to TIME. “What they want to do,” Zelensky says, “is raise the temperature just enough to show that the West will waver in its support for Ukraine, that they do not really see us as a partner.” As Zelensky puts it: “It’s a kind of test.”