WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy summoned memories of Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11 terror attacks Wednesday in an impassioned live-video plea to Congress to send more help for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Lawmakers stood and cheered, and President Joe Biden later announced the U.S. is sending more anti-aircraft, anti-armor weapons and drones.
Biden also declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal — his strongest condemnation yet — the day after the Senate unanimously asked for international investigations of Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.
In a moment of high drama at the Capitol, Zelenskyy livestreamed his speech to a rapt audience of lawmakers on a giant screen, acknowledging from the start that the no-fly zone he has repeatedly sought to “close the sky” to airstrikes on his country may not happen. Biden has resisted that, as well as approval for the U.S. or NATO to send MiG fighter jets from Poland as risking wider war with nuclear-armed Putin.
Instead, Zelenskyy pleaded for other military aid and more drastic economic sanctions to stop the Russian assault with the fate of his country at stake.
Wearing his now-trademark army green T-shirt, Zelinskyy began his remarks to “Americans, friends” by invoking the destruction the U.S. suffered in 1941 when Japan bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by militants who commandeered passenger airplanes to crash into the symbols of Western democracy and economy.
To end the invasion, Zelenskyy told the American lawmakers: “I call on you to do more.”
Nearing the three-week mark in an ever-escalating war, Zelenskyy has used the global stage to implore allied leaders to help stop the Russian invasion of his country. The young actor-turned-president has emerged as a heroic figure at the center of what many view as the biggest security threat to Europe since World War II. Almost 3 million refugees have fled Ukraine as the violence has spread, the fastest exodus in modern times.
Biden, who said he listened to Zelenskyy’s speech at the White House, did not directly respond to the the criticism that the U.S. should be doing more for the Ukrainians. But he said, “We are united in our abhorrence of Putin’s depraved onslaught, and we’re going to continue to have their backs as they fight for their freedom, their democracy, their very survival.”
Later, leaving an unrelated event, he declared of Putin: “He’s a war criminal.” — the sharpest condemnation yet of Putin and Russian actions by a U.S. official since the invasion of Ukraine.
Biden noted that Russia has bombed hospitals and held doctors hostage.
At the White Hose, Biden described new help he had already been prepared to announce. He said the U.S. will be sending an additional $800 million in military assistance, making a total of $2 billion in such aid since he took office more than a year ago. About $1 billion in aid has been sent in the past week. Biden said the new assistance includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 100 grenade launchers, 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition and grenade launchers and mortar rounds and an unspecified number of drones.