Ukraine’s president on Thursday insisted on the need for European Union member states to cooperate with the country at a faster speed than Russia to re-equip itself and called for sanctions against Russian nuclear power.
“The ability to deepen our cooperation dynamics has to be faster than our aggressor’s ability to mobilize,” said Volodymyr Zelensky at the start of a European Council meeting in Brussels (Belgium).
Flanked by the President of the Council, Charles Michel, and before the presidents and prime ministers of the 27 countries, Zelensky thanked the “unconditional support” that the country has received since the start of the war, almost a year ago: the successive packages of the sanctions, the reception of refugees, the humanitarian and economic-financial aid and, especially, the weapons that are being used to counteract the Moscow offensive.
And he insisted on the request that he has been making in recent weeks: “We need artillery, ammunition, tanks, long-range missiles and fighters.”
The tenth package of sanctions will, in principle, be ready on February 24, and the President of Ukraine insisted on the need to include Russian nuclear energy: “Do you think it is fair not to have sanctions when Russia threatens a nuclear cloud?” questioned. .
Volodymyr Zelensky also announced that he had recently spoken with the president of Moldova about an alleged Kremlin plan to destroy that country neighboring Ukraine.
“When I received this document, I immediately warned Moldova about this threat in order to protect it. I think all of you would do the same. I don’t know if Moscow gave the order to proceed with this plan, but it is very similar. the one they wanted to implement in Ukraine,” he added.
Zelensky recalled the pioneers of the European Union Robert Schumann and Jean Monnet and considered that the ideal they created needed “another component, without which everything is weak: security.”
And he called for a “joint transformation” between the 27 and the countries that aspire to be part of the Union, specifically Ukraine: “If we succeed, your names will go down in history along with those of Schumann and Monnet.”
Ukraine “never wanted this war, never wanted any war”, Zelensky continued, and “always tried to preserve peace”, but today the support of the entire European Union is needed so that “Europe remains united”, with an “independent Ukraine “. , an independent Moldova, an independent Georgia and all the other states that are part of the European family”.
Source: TSF
