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Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday made an impassioned plea in English to “every free person on the planet” to hold protests against Russia’s invasion of his country.
Zelensky spoke for nearly two minutes from a dark and empty Kyiv square about the significance of ordinary people around the world taking a stand against Russia’s four-week-old unprovoked war, which started on Feb. 24.
“The war of Russia is not only the war against Ukraine; its meaning is much wider. Russia started the war against freedom as it is,” he said to the camera, while clad in his now trademark beige t-shirt and sweatshirt.
“This is only the beginning for Russia on the Ukrainian land. Russia is trying to defeat the freedom of all people in Europe, of all the people in the world. It tries to show that only crude and cruel force matters. It tries to show that people do not matter, as well as everything else that make us people. That’s the reason we all must stop Russia. The world must stop the war.”
Zelensky, 44, had defiantly hunkered down in Ukraine’s capital city as Russian forces closed in over the past month, garnering praise for his direct war-time communication skills. His direct appeal to English speakers marked a clear contrast to his steady stream of updates in Ukraine.
“Show your standing. Come from your offices, your homes, your schools and universities. Come in the name of peace. Come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to support freedom, to support life. Come to your squares, your streets; make yourselves visible and heard,” he implored the international community.
“Say that people matter, freedom matters, peace matters, Ukraine matters — from March 24 in downtowns of your cities, all as one together who want to stop the war.”
Zelensky had survived more than a dozen assassination attempts since the war begin, his advisors say.
His call to action came after Ukraine leaders Wednesday reported initial success in a counter-offensive to win back control of territories around Kyiv.
Zelensky said Tuesday he was prepared to pledge that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO in a bid to broker a peace deal with Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had rejected Zelensky’s repeated calls for high-level dialogue, as a Kremlin official said peace talks were going “much more slowly and less substantively than we would like.”
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army General Mark Milley expressed concerns Wednesday that Russian defense leaders “have so far declined to engage” with the Pentagon, according to The Washington Post.
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