President Joe Biden said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tuned out warnings that Russia would invade his country in the lead-up to the Feb. 24 attack.

''I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating, but I knew, and we had data to sustain, he was going in off the border. There was no doubt. And Zelenskiy didn’t want to hear it, nor did a lot of people,'' Biden said Friday during a political fundraiser in Los Angeles.

The president acknowledged that the possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin launching a full-scale invasion may have seemed far-fetched, saying, ''I understand why they didn’t want to hear it.''