Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday spoke about memories of Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in an impassioned live video appeal to Congress to send more aid to Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Lawmakers stood and clapped, and President Joe Biden later announced that the United States would send more anti-aircraft, anti-armour and drone weapons.
Biden also declared Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal – his strongest conviction yet – the day after the Senate unanimously called for international investigations into Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.
In a moment of great drama on Capitol Hill, Zelenskyy livestreamed his speech to an elated audience of lawmakers on a giant screen, acknowledging from the start that the no-fly zone he has repeatedly sought to “close the heaven” to airstrikes on his country may not happen. Biden resisted that, as well as US or NATO approval to send MiG fighter jets from Poland, as they risked a wider war with nuclear-armed Putin. .
Instead, Zelenskyy pleaded for more military aid and tougher economic sanctions to stop the Russian onslaught with his country’s fate at stake.
Wearing his now iconic military green t-shirt, Zelinskyy began his remarks to “Americans, friends” by recalling the destruction suffered by the United States in 1941 when Japan bombed the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by militants who commandeered passenger planes to crash into symbols of Western democracy and economics.
“Do you remember Pearl Harbor? … Do you remember September 11? Zelensky asked. “Our country is going through the same thing every day right now.”
To end the invasion, Zelenskyy told US lawmakers, “I call on you to do more.”