Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has channelled the spirit of Winston Churchill in a speech to the UK.
It was an historic moment today, Tuesday March 8, as President Zelenskyy became the first foreign leader to address the House when he said his people will ‘fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets’ – paraphrasing Churchill’s famous speech.
The speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, had screens returned to the chamber for the first time since the pandemic for the President to speak. But he was technically not speaking to the House under formal business as that was suspended for the speech.
He received standing applause from the whole house before he began his speech from Kyiv in Ukraine.
13 days and counting
In his speech the President said: ‘I would like to tell you about the 13 days of war we didn’t start. We do not want to lose what is ours, our country, Ukraine, just the same as you once didn’t want to lose your country when Nazis started to fight your country and you had to fight for Britain.’
He gave the house a day-by-day briefing of how the war has unfolded in Ukraine by the Russian ‘beasts’ – as Zelenskyy described them.
Zelenskyy said: ‘On day one at 4am we were attacked by cruise missiles, everybody woke up, people, children, the entire Ukraine and since then we have not been sleeping. We have all been fighting for our country.’
Ukraine then faced air strikes, but when Russia demanded they lay down arms, Ukrainians ‘continued fighting’.
He went on to say: ‘’That didn’t break us.’
Over the 13 days the war has been going on the President said children have died, cities have been bombarded, the Babyn Yar holocaust memorial has been shelled, and hospitals have been destroyed.
Zelenskyy explained that over 10,000 Russians have been killed, including a general, and some have been taken captive but have not been tortured by their Ukrainian captors.
Devastation
The former comedian and actor-turned politician then spoke of the devastating situation in Mariupol where over 50 children have been killed.
He said: ‘They do not allow any food, any water, and people started panicking.
‘These are the children who could have lived. But these people have taken them away from us.’
He said the question for Ukraine now is a Shakespearen one: ‘”To be or not to be” – and for 13 days this question could have been asked but now I can give you a definitive answer, it is yes, to be’.
Zelenskyy then compared Ukraine’s situation to that of Britain in WWII as he paraphrased Winston Churchill.
He said: ‘I would like to remind you of the words the United Kingdom have already heard which are important again. We will not give up, and we will not lose, we will fight until the end, in the sea and in the air, we will continue fighting for our land whatever the cost.
‘We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets.’
A plea to the UK
Zelenskyy finished his speech with a plea to the UK he asked the Prime Minister Boris Johnson to harden the sanctions saying, Ukraine is ‘looking for your help’, adding: ‘We are thankful for this help and I am grateful to you Boris.’
The PM responded to the President’s speech saying: ‘Never before in all our centuries of our parliamentary democracy has the House listened to such an address.’
He said the UK will ‘press on’ with supplying Ukraine with the weapons and ‘tightening the economic vice around Vladimir Putin’.
‘We will employ every method we can, diplomatic, humanitarian and economic, until Vladimir Putin has failed in this disastrous venture and Ukraine is free once more,’ he added.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer then praised Zelenskyy’s leadership, as he said: ‘No one would have blamed him for fleeing.’
Starmer added that the Ukrainian president has prompted the world into action saying ‘too often we have let Putin have his way’.