Ukraine Pres. Zelensky pushes for war aid, peace plan
Ukraine Pres. Zelensky pushes for war aid, peace plan
Transcript
00:00 News overseas embattled and seemingly desperate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lashed out
00:06 at Russia and the 78th UN General Assembly urging UN member nations to vote and strip
00:11 Russia of its veto power in the UN Security Council. Then he flew to Washington DC to meet
00:18 with lawmakers and US President Joe Biden to beg for more aid and propose a peace plan
00:24 as we hear more from VOA's Anita Powell.
00:29 Ukraine's counter-offensive is moving inch by painful inch to try to reclaim Russian-held
00:34 territory but the public relations blitz led by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
00:40 is tearing its way from the United Nations in New York where he appealed to the global
00:44 community to embrace his peace plan to Capitol Hill where he appealed to legislators for 24
00:49 billion dollars in aid to support the war effort to the Pentagon where military officials
00:54 reaffirmed their support and from there to the biggest stage of all the White House. He
01:00 held his sixth in-person meeting with President Joe Biden on Thursday. And together with our
01:04 partners and allies the American people are determined to see to it that you do all we
01:09 can to ensure the world stands with you and that is our overwhelming objective. Today
01:14 I'm in Washington to strengthen our coalition to defend Ukrainian children, our families,
01:20 our homes, freedom and democracy in the world and I started my day in the U.S. Congress to
01:27 thank his members and to people of America for all the big huge support. This trip to
01:33 a capital thousands of miles from the front matters analysts say. What Biden is doing
01:38 by giving Zelensky this platform is saying this this this issue matters to us. This U.S.
01:46 national interests are on the line here and so we need to be paying attention to what
01:52 Zelensky is saying and the the requests that the Ukrainians are making. On Thursday Biden
01:57 announced a new package of military assistance that includes air defense capabilities and
02:01 artillery. VOA asked the administration if they fully support Zelensky's 10-point peace plan
02:06 which he's been shopping to world leaders for nearly a year. Each of the individual elements
02:11 of the peace plan if you sat one of them down sovereignty and territorial integrity food
02:16 security ecological security nuclear safety to us it's not even a question whether we agree
02:22 of course we do these are just basic principles of the international system they're consistent
02:29 with the U.N. charter and we have said that President Zelensky's vision for a just peace
02:34 is fully consistent with the United Nations charter and with kind of decency and common
02:39 humanity. But before there can be peace Biden is asking Congress for 24 billion dollars to fund
02:45 Ukraine's war effort. On Thursday Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy remained non-committal
02:50 but members of his party expressed support. They need it and they're going to get it. I said you
02:56 know the majority of the majority support this. I know there's some dissension on both sides but I
03:01 said a war of attrition is not going to win this and that's what Putin wants because he wants to
03:06 break the will of the American people and the Europeans. We can't afford a war of attrition
03:11 we need a plan for victory and we need to do it soon. That urgent question is something that
03:16 resonates from the ornate surroundings of the West Wing to the wasted wreckage that Ukrainians
03:21 used to call home. How much longer can this go on? Anita Powell VOA News, the White House.