With his army struggling to fend off fierce Russian advances all across the front, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine urged the United States and Europe to do more to defend his nation, dismissing fears of nuclear escalation and proposing that NATO planes shoot down Russian missiles in Ukrainian airspace.

Mr. Zelensky said he had also appealed to senior U.S. officials to allow Ukraine to fire American missiles and other weaponry at military targets inside Russia — a tactic the United States continues to oppose. The inability to do so, he insisted, gave Russia a “huge advantage” in cross-border warfare that it is exploiting with assaults in Ukraine’s northeast.

His comments, made in an interview on Monday with The New York Times in central Kyiv, were among his most full-throated appeals yet to the United States and its NATO allies for more help. Over 50 minutes at the ornate House With Chimeras in the presidential offices, he spoke with a mix of frustration and bewilderment at the West’s reluctance to take bolder steps to ensure that Ukraine prevails.

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  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    25 days ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Mr. Zelensky said he had also appealed to U.S. officials to allow Ukraine to fire American missiles and other weaponry at military targets inside Russia — a tactic the United States continues to oppose.

    Over 50 minutes at the ornate House With Chimeras in the presidential offices, he spoke with a mix of frustration and bewilderment at the West’s reluctance to take bolder steps to ensure that Ukraine prevails.

    In the wide-ranging interview, Mr. Zelensky, 46, discussed the wrenching sadness of visiting mass graves and consoling the families of dead soldiers, but also his own personal journey, and the “recharge” he gets from the little time he has to spend with his children.

    Asked about potential cease-fire negotiations, he called for diplomacy that avoids direct talks with Russia but rallies nations behind Ukraine’s positions for an eventual peace settlement.

    Mr. Zelensky passed a critical point in his presidency early in the war with the failure of Russia’s attempted decapitating attack on the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv, which he has said included a plan to capture or assassinate him.

    Competitive national elections have been a success of Ukraine’s politics since independence in 1991, fulfilling the promise of a democratic transition that fell flat in Russia, Belarus and some countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus.


    The original article contains 1,550 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Pilferjinx@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      “Sir, would you politely stop invading us and trying to wipe out the concept of us Ukrainians?”

      • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        24 days ago

        don’t you understand, not letting yourself be genocided is violence.

        and clearly russia is only doing genocide because tehy were FORCED. not like those bad israelis.

  • lurch@sh.itjust.works
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    25 days ago

    We, the allies, should just attack russia and split it like Germany back in the day. That really helped to make it a peaceful democratic country. I don’t see how russia can fix itself any more. I also don’t like how long putin has kept this war up and how he is willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens. We should stop that quickly, even if it means we will find out how many of his nukes still work. He’s clearly insane and retarded, so we might find out anyway. He’s unpredictable.

    • NegativeLookBehind@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      I love it when people are happy to say “let’s just fuck around and find out” when it comes to all-out nuclear warfare and mutually assured destruction

    • demonsword@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      We, the allies, should just attack russia and split it like Germany back in the day

      good luck trying that against a country that has hundreds of nuclear warheads

      • circuscritic
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        25 days ago

        They have thousands*. Although due to the high cost and difficulty of maintaining them over decades, it’s quite possible that only hundreds will actually detonate once they reach their targets.

        Which is still enough to cause a nuclear winter.

        *Thousands of warheads, but many of those will be MIRV, so a single ICBM can impact multiple locations.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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      25 days ago

      That’s an objectively idiotic idea, because that would have a roughly 100% chance of kicking off a nuclear conflict.

      I don’t place much stock in Russias saber rattling, but NATO straight up invading Russia would unquestionably trigger an absolutely vicious response.

    • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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      25 days ago

      It would be nice to do, but also a death sentence for the whole world. And not a nice death, a horrible, slow death from cancer and starvation from a global winter.