Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Zelensky’s address was strange, but sensational

UK Parliament / Jessica Taylor

This afternoon, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the House of Commons. A single flat-screen TV broadcast his speech to a packed chamber.

Zelensky appeared in plain green fatigues next to Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag. He looked pale, tired, fearless and determined. Squads of foreign killers are roaming his homeland trying to find him.

His words were spoken in English by a translator who probably had no advance sight of the text. The halting, ungrammatical phrases made the address strangely powerful.

‘I would like to tell you about the 13 days of war. The war that we did not start.’ Zelensky’s goal is simple. ‘We do not want to lose what is ours.’ And he compared his struggle with Britain’s fight to the death against Germany.

The invasion took Ukraine by surprise. Cruise missiles rained down in the middle of the night: ’Everybody woke up. Since then we have not been sleeping. We have all been fighting for our country with our armies.’

The assassins hunting Zelensky are powerless to do anything but magnify his reputation by ending his life

Artillery attacks followed.

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