Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, telling the member nations, “I promise, being really united we can guarantee fair peace for all nations.”
Speaking in English throughout his speech, Zelensky blasted Russian “aggressors” who invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“Ukraine gave up its third largest nuclear arsenal,” Zelensky noted. “The world then decided Russia should become a keeper of such power. Yet it was Russia that deserved nuclear disarmament the most back in the 1990s. And Russia deserves it now. Terrorists have no right to hold nuclear weapons.”
However, it’s not just through a nuclear threat that Russia is able to terrorize, according to Zelensky.
The Ukrainian President also pointed to Russia’s targeting of Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, which he said was “a clear attempt by Russia to weaponize the food shortage on the global market in exchange for recognition for some if not all of the captured [Ukrainian] territories.”
Zelensky also noted that until now, “kidnapping has never been part of a government policy.” He claimed he had evidence of hundreds of thousands of children who’ve been kidnapped by Russia from occupied territories of Ukraine and later deported.
In Russia those children will be taught to hate Ukraine, Zelensky claimed, adding, “This is clearly a genocide when hatred is weaponized against one nation.”
Without being specific, Zelensky also called out attempts by some nations “to make some shady dealings behind the scenes.”
Adding that “evil cannot be trusted,” he suggested that the assembled members ask the late Wagner PMC mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash near Moscow last month, what comes of trusting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Weaponization must be restrained,” Zelensky concluded his speech. “War crimes must be punished. Deported people must come back home, and the occupier must return to their own land. We must be united to make it, and we’ll do it.”
Zelenksy is also expected to meet with President Biden in Washington later this week, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry. Afterward, Zelensky will meet with bipartisan Congressional leadership and other senior U.S. Officials.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that the Washington visit “will reaffirm the unbreakable Ukrainian-American partnership in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression and our shared determination to put an end to it through a Ukrainian victory.”
