UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the world’s leaders Wednesday to keep choking Russia’s revenues and impede its war efforts, telling the U.N. General Assembly that “Russia’s revenues must remain a target.”
“When someone gives Russia more money through trade, they give this war more time. And that is exactly why we insist on limiting trade with the aggressor, and why we are burning Russia’s revenues ourselves,” he said in English, a language he often uses at the world body.
Russia gets its turn Saturday to address the assembly. President Vladimir Putin hasn’t traveled to the gathering in years, sending Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov instead.
Lavrov told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that Russia is prepared to negotiate toward a lasting peace but won’t just “pause” the war. He argued that such a pause would just buy Ukraine and its backers time to line up more weapons.
Zelenskyy cast doubt on Russia’s interest in ending the fighting.
“Something always seems to stop Putin from saying, ‘That’s it. Enough. Peace,’” Zelenskyy said. “Can you even imagine him without war? He is ‘Patient Zero’, the one from whom war keeps spreading further. … ‘Patient Zero’ must be stopped.”
The war has reverberated across the planet
Russia invaded Ukraine more than 4½ years ago and says it’s out to protect its own security and the interests of Russians and Russian-speakers in parts of Ukraine. Western analysts estimate that over 500,000 Russian troops have been killed and that Ukraine has recorded more than 500,000 military casualties, including up to 140,000 deaths. Neither country discloses its own casualty totals.
The war has had global repercussions for fuel, fertilizer and grain shipments — and for geopolitics, widening divisions between Russia and the West.
With front-line positions in eastern and southern Ukraine largely unchanged since last year, Russia and Ukraine have intensified long-range attacks with drones and missiles.
Russian drones pounded the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in daylight attacks on Wednesday, killing two people and wounding 23; two others were injured by a strike that started a big fire at a shopping mall in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it struck Ukrainian military-industrial and energy facilities, logistics centers, and sea vessels overnight. The ministry said its air defenses intercepted more than 500 Ukrainian drones over multiple Russian regions and Crimea, as well as the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Crimea is the peninsula that Russia seized by force and illegally annexed in 2014.
Zelenskyy says ‘you can stand and survive’
Zelenskyy told the assembly that Russia has used 63,000 attack drones of different types against Ukraine so far this year alone. While celebrating that his own country “has proven that even against a much bigger enemy, you can stand and survive,” he implored world leaders to deny Putin money or foreign fighters.
“Limit his money. Limit his war,” the Ukrainian leader said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has been looking for additional resources. Zelenskyy noted to reporters Tuesday that his country hasn’t yet gotten clear answers to its effort to acquire more U.S. Patriot air defense systems.
Zelenskyy met Tuesday with U.S. President Donald Trump on the U.N. sidelines.
In brief remarks to the media before the meeting, Trump reiterated that he believes “we’re going to make a deal” with Russia and Ukraine to quell the fighting. The president predicted on the 2024 campaign trail that he’d swiftly broker an end to the war but hasn’t succeeded so far. Zelenskyy said Tuesday he was hopeful.
“Sometimes, it may seem that Ukraine is focused, focused, only on war because we speak about weapons, we speak about defense and sanctions against the aggressor. But Ukrainians did not choose this war,” he told the assembly on Wednesday. “We choose not to die. …. We are defending ourselves.”