Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky invoked September 11 and Pearl Harbour in an impassioned address to the US Congress yesterday pleading for weapons to fight Russia – and earning a promise from President Joe Biden just hours later for $1bn in new arms.
The president’s video address from embattled Kyiv, bolstered by a montage of horrific TV footage of Ukrainian civilians under Russian assault, delivered an emotional gut-punch to US lawmakers.
Bearded and dressed in a military green T-shirt, the Ukrainian leader renewed his frequent appeals for a Western-enforced no-fly zone to bar Russian warplanes, something Biden has rejected as almost certainly leading to what he says would be “World War III.” More than three weeks into a war that has claimed hundreds of civilian lives and turned more than three million Ukrainians into refugees, Zelensky said his country was battling “a terror that Europe has not seen... for 80 years.”
“Remember Pearl Harbor, terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you,” he said, recalling the air raid that brought the United States into World War II.
“Protect our sky,” he said.
But in a nod to Western concerns, Zelensky added that an alternative to the no-fly zone would be more powerful weapons to allow Ukrainians to defend themselves.
Within hours, Biden delivered his response: an extra $800mn in military aid, which added to another instalment last week brings the latest deliveries to $1bn — and $2bn since Biden took office. The new batch includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, thousands of anti-tank weapons, including 2,000 of the now famously deadly Javelin rockets, 100 “tactical” drones, 20mn rounds of small arms ammunition and 25,000 sets of helmets and body armour.
Ukraine has already been given hundreds of Stingers, which can shoot down relatively low flying aircraft.
But Biden said that “at the request of President Zelensky, we have identified and are helping Ukraine acquire additional longer-range anti-aircraft systems.”
Gregory Meeks, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the House of Representatives, indicated that what was being discussed were S-300 anti-aircraft systems that are of Russian design but also are owned by some European Nato members and would be easily integrated into Ukraine’s military.