Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the UN General Assembly. Photo: EPA-EFE/SARAH YENESEL
In a speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed the importance of attaining “real peace” in Ukraine and cautioned against making “half-hearted” attempts to establish “a frozen truce”.
“Ukraine wants to end this war more than anyone,” Zelensky said, noting however that “it’s impossible to truly and fairly resolve matters of war and peace” at the UN due to Russia’s veto power in the Security Council. He argued that his peace plan, which outlines a 10-point strategy for Ukraine to win the war, was “the best opportunity for peace”.
Zelensky stressed that there could be “no just peace without Ukraine”. “It is the Ukrainian people who feel the full pain of this war. It’s Ukrainian children who are learning to distinguish the sounds of different types of artillery and drones because of Russia’s war … It’s our heroic soldiers who are giving their lives to defend our country from invaders trying to steal our land,” he said.
He added that “when some propose alternative, half-hearted settlement plans”, they ignore “the interests and suffering of Ukrainians, who are affected by war the most”. Such attempts, he said, gave Putin “the political space to continue the war and pressure the world to bring more nations under control,” Zelensky said, stressing that any “alternative attempts to seek peace are in fact efforts to achieve a lull instead of an end to the war”.
“Maybe someone wants a Nobel Prize for their political biography for frozen truce instead of real peace, but the only prizes Putin will give you in return are more suffering and disasters,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky also said he had received an “alarming report” from Ukrainian intelligence that said Russia planned to attack Ukrainian nuclear plants and their infrastructure to disconnect them from the power grid, which could lead to a “nuclear disaster”. “A day like that must never come. And Moscow needs to understand this,” Zelensky said, adding that it was up to UN member states to “put pressure on the aggressor”.
He urged UN member states to support Ukraine’s peace plan, which he said included restoring nuclear safety, ensuring food security, bringing home all captured Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, and upholding Ukraine’s right to territorial integrity.
“The world has already been through colonial wars and conspiracies of great powers at the expense of those who are smaller,” Zelensky said, as he concluded his speech. “And Ukrainians will never accept why anyone in the world believes that such a brutal colonial past, which suits no one today, can be imposed on Ukraine now instead of a normal, peaceful life.”
