Zelenskyy urges Nato to be ‘courageous’, send more weapons to Ukraine

Madrid, Jun 29 (EFE).- Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday urged Nato leaders to be “extremely courageous” in confronting Russia’s aggression and to provide his country with more weapons.

Zelenskyy was addressing a council of heads of state and government at a major Nato summit being held in Madrid.

“With an extremely aggressive Kremlin the world needs an extremely courageous Alliance,” he said by videoconference.

The president said that Russia “does not want to stop neither in the Donbas nor in southern Ukraine, it wants to gobble up, city by city, everyone in Europe whom the Russian leadership considers its property and not independent states.”

“This is Russia’s real goal,” he insisted.

Zelenskyy explained that Moscow’s leadership sees the world “differently, not the way it is.”

“It sees, for example, Lithuania not as a member of your alliance, but as a republic of the USSR,” he said.

“For us, it is a former Soviet republic. For us it is the past. And they see it as a possible future, they want to enslave it again,” he stressed, insisting that the Kremlin held that view for every country that borders Russia and “every state that was once in Moscow’s sphere of influence.”

Zelenskyy hailed Finland and Sweden’s accession to Nato, saying it was positive “that this has happened now, before Russia had started to act against them as well.”

He also denounced the Alliance for what he considered insufficient weapons support, urging western leaders to provide more help to Ukraine or “face a delayed war” with Russia.

Specifically, he repeated his government’s calls for increased deliveries of artillery and air raid defense systems.

“On the battlefield Russia relies first of all on artillery superiority,” he said, adding that he was “grateful” for the weapons Ukraine has already received.

“But the war continues, precisely a war in which artillery is of enormous importance. The war must not drag on. To break the Russian artillery advantage, we need many more modern systems, modern artillery,” he emphasized.

He also called for Ukraine to be granted closer ties with the defensive alliance, reminding Nato leaders that his country shares the same security goals with the West.

“We are interested in security and stability on the European continent, in the world,” Zelenskyy told the meeting, according to a statement on his Telegram account.

“Helping Ukraine end this war on the battlefield now, that is, giving a really strong response to Russia’s actions, is what we, and the Alliance as a whole, the whole Euro-Atlantic community, need,” he said.

Ukraine’s president urged Nato leaders to include Ukraine in collective security agreements and claimed that his country’s efforts and sacrifices since Russia invaded in late February warranted closer ties with the alliance that have not yet materialized.

“Hasn’t our contribution to defending Europe and the entire civilization been insufficient? What else is necessary?,” Zelenskyy asked. EFE

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