President Zelensky pleads for more military support — saying he knows how Winston Churchill felt during WWII
PRESIDENT Zelensky has pleaded for more military support — and said he knows how Winston Churchill felt during World War Two.
He was on a clear mission to put more pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, standing just yards away, to supply fighter jets in the face of Russian aggression.
His 20-minute lunchtime speech to MPs and peers was made in Parliament’s Westminster Hall — where the Queen lay in state last year.
Former Prime Ministers Liz Truss, Theresa May and Boris Johnson all stood in the vast hall as the sun beamed in through the stained-glass windows behind Mr Zelensky.
The leader of war-torn Ukraine even symbolically presented Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle with a helmet from one of his pilots.
Inscribed on it were the words: “We have freedom. Give us wings to protect it.”
Mr Zelensky, in his military fatigues, added: “I appeal to you and the world with simple and yet most important words: combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”
He also referred to the monarch’s own air force training. To applause from a packed hall, he said: “In Britain, the king is an air force pilot and in Ukraine today, every air force pilot is a king.”
Mr Zelensky also recalled a visit to the Churchill War Rooms in October 2020 where he said he now realises how the wartime PM felt.
He said: “A guide smiled and offered me to sit down on this armchair from which war orders had been given.
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“He asked me how did I feel, and I said that I certainly felt something.
“But it is only now that I know what the feeling was. And all Ukrainians know it perfectly well too.
“It is the feeling of how bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory.”