On Tuesday, March 15, 2022, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky spoke via videoconference from Kyiv with the Canadian authorities. Pennsylvania
After a speech in the UK House of Commons on March 8 and a few hours before the speech before the US Congress, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky was invited on Tuesday, March 15, to an extraordinary meeting of the Canadian Parliament. On the 20th day of the outbreak of war, via videoconference from Kyiv, the Ukrainian leader, dressed in all khakis, gave an emotional ten-minute speech to tell Canadian MPs and senators about the reality of war.
“I want you to feel the same as we do,” he told them. “Since the beginning of this war, 97 children have died,” and “every night is a nightmare,” he elaborated, describing shelling of hospitals and kindergartens, explosions at 4 a.m. in city blocks, fires in nuclear power plants, water shortages and electricity, hunger, from which the inhabitants of Mariupol are now suffering.
“Imagine the questions of your children who are perplexed about what is happening,” “imagine,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated several times, multiplying the parallels with Canadian cities:
“Imagine Vancouver under siege (…), imagine Montreal airport bombed (…), imagine Toronto’s CN Tower hit by Russian bombs, this is our reality. »
“How many attacks will it take before these measures are taken? »
So many images are meant to support his request for a no-fly zone in the Ukrainian skies: “You provide us with military and humanitarian assistance, you have imposed tough sanctions, but we see that, unfortunately, this does not put an end to it. to war (…). How many attacks will it take before taking these actions? »
And add: “We are not asking for much. We ask for real support to help us win. »
Welcome for long minutes
Canadian parliamentarians, with a yellow-blue ribbon in their buttonholes as a sign of support, greeted, standing for long minutes, his speech, some deputies energetically launched “Glory to Ukraine! (“Glory to Ukraine”).
Minutes earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opened this exceptional session by welcoming Volodymyr Zelensky from a distance, calling him a “courageous and exceptional leader.” “Your courage and the courage of your people inspire us all. You defend the right of Ukrainians to choose their future. And in doing so, you are defending the values that are the pillars of all free and democratic countries,” he told her, without mentioning, however, the flight ban. Last week, in an interview with the English-language public channel CTV, he, like his Atlantic Alliance partners, preemptively ruled out a positive response to the Ukrainian request: “It would be heartbreaking if,” he blurted, “not to do it, because the risk of escalation is too great, if we send NATO planes into the sky of Ukraine to shoot down Russian planes. »
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