Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a virtual speech to Congress on Wednesday and reiterated his call for the US to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would mean direct war with Russia.
“Is this a lot to ask for, to create a no-fly zone — zone over Ukraine to save people? Is this too much to ask — humanitarian no-fly zone, something that Ukraine — that Russia would not be able to terrorize our free cities?” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian leader also played a graphic video that showed Russian strikes on Ukraine that ended with the words “close the sky over Ukraine.” In order for the US and NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, the Western powers would have to shoot down Russian planes and bomb surface-to-air missiles inside Russia.
President Biden has repeatedly said that he has no plans to go to war with Russia in Ukraine since it could spark World War III and risk nuclear war. Zelensky recognized in his speech that the US was hesitant to impose the no-fly zone. He said if the US going to war with Russia was “too much to ask,” there is an “alternative” plan that involves the US giving Ukraine S-300 surface-to-air missiles and other anti-aircraft weapons.
Zelensky invoked Martin Luther King Jr in his request for the anti-aircraft weapons. “‘I have a dream.’ These words are known to each of you today. I can say, ‘I have a need: I need to protect our sky,'” Zelensky said. Throughout the speech, Zelensky also invoked 9/11 and the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
Zelensky received a standing ovation from Congress, and President Biden appeared to comply with his alternative plan by announcing $800 million in additional military aid for Ukraine that includes anti-aircraft weapons.
No video of the 8years he was killing Ukrainians in Donbass 15,000 dead and he just forgot to mention it??
Zelensky is the real war criminal.
Rambo Zelensky is a farce. …way over the top, …was he trained by The Italian Stallion? …and isn’t there more than a hint of un-manly desperation in his unintended parody of American “icons”?
Look for the people pulling the strings.
He hasn’t been killing them for eight years, just three. He took over the killing from his predecessor in 2019.
15,000 dead who? civilians, or insurgents fighting an 8year rebellion? I asked another “antiwar” person a few minutes ago the same question, also where his figure of 14,000 came from.
Will I get reliable documentation of either figure from either of you? I’m not holding my breath. I still recall that the kangaroo court that sentenced Ceausescu to death for “genocide” gave a figure of 60,000 dead of which not even 1% of that figure was reliably accounted for.
Aww, little leftist Nyikos going on again. You seriously claim the people killed in Donbass were all military, little idiot? You claim the schools and administrative buildings bombed were military bases? LOL
Little dumbass defending the illegal 2014 coup, and attacking the people who opposed it. You are so brainwashed it’s hilarious!
Who says anyone owns you anything, little liar? You could easily have found the numbers yourself by reading right here on Antiwar and follow the links, or on other sites. You have no facts to stand on, so your method is always to claim “you didn’t post any links so I don’t have to believe it waaaah!” whenever anyone says something you don’t like. That’s not how it works, sorry.
Calling me a “leftist” is as ludicrous as Thomas L. Knapp calling AOC “right leaning conservative.” There is no trace of leftism in anything I have written.
Calling me a “liar” for asking for documentation is libel, pure and simple.
You allege the existence of links accompanying others’ unsupported allegation of 14,000/15,000 dead, but I have not seen any and you belligerently refuse to provide them. Your ranting at the end to “justify” your refusal bespeaks a totalitarian mentality, capped with:
“That’s not how it works, sorry.”
It’s how it ultimately worked where allegations of 60,000 deaths in a mockery of a trial were made, but your complete ignoring of what I said about the precedent that overblown figure made marks you as a person with a closed mind.
You two should get a room or something.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/56859d0b7454bb193f4c343eee36f50cf0f9b0c6a6d2038628941b160964c1a8.png
😂
This Zelensky is fanning the flames of war, even nuclear war which will effect each and everyone of us. That is what makes him a war criminal and one of the worst. The solution is to implement the Minsk Agreements Ukraine signed in 2014 and 2015, declare his country neutral and stop the flow of weapons into his country from the west. That’s a very, very reasonable demand,
Not for Zelensky and his oligarchical sponsors.
Ukraine has the potential to become the Israel of Eastern Europe.
They can be non-aligned, even want to be, but they also want to be WMD-armed.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/03/16/is-russias-central-bank-chief-a-hostile-foreign-agent-deliberately-sabotaging-the-russian-economy/
Is Russia’s Central Bank Chief A Foreign Agent?
Doubtful. She just has a different approach to national sovereignty.
Decoupling from Russia is painful for the West, and unsustainable.
Had the West not been integrated with Russia, a Great Game war would have happened far sooner.
As is, the neocon Globalists spent years maneuvering this war against natural tides for cooperation and mutual prosperity.
Invoking MLK and still getting a standing ovation. I’d think one side would be pissed he dare quote King and the other side would pissed because he dare quote King. One of those bipartisan issues for opposite reasons.
“Destroyed and sunk” by Ukrainian propaganda
Mar 16, 2022
yvonne lee
“Destroyed and sunk” by Ukrainian propaganda, the patrol ship “Vasily
Bykov” of project 22160 of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy
entered Sevastopol today after completing tasks at sea.
How about more recent attacks: Ukraine’s seven years of bombing Donbass? If 9/11 gives Washington the right to attack Afghanistan, then thousands killed in Donbass gives Russia the right to attack Ukraine.
That this guy would invoke Pearl Harbor and 9-11 before Congress, is, I suppose, just par for the course. Before Parliament he invoked Churchill. But for him to invoke idealist, pacifist, preacher of non violence Martin Luther King’s “dream” of racial equality in his beg-a-thon for ever more weapons is repulsive and literally disgusting. Just the thought of it makes me physically ill.
And still got him a standing O.
This shows how stupid Zelensky – and Congress – is. How do you get S-300 missiles inside Ukraine or even in Poland covering Ukraine? In the latter case, Russia will hit them and then NATO is in the war. How do you get Ukrainians trained to use them in less than six months? Look how long it took to get them operational in Syria. If the US operates them, then again the US is directly in the war. It’s nonsense intended to whip up war fever in Congress – and they bought it.
Ukraine’s armed forces already use the S-300.
Unless the S-300 is a lot more complex than its US equivalent (the Patriot), the training for the various crew members ranges from about 3 months to about 5 months. But that’s in peacetime, or at least when there’s all the time in the world. In wartime, it’s probably OJT.
Courtesy of The Saker, in this case…
Briefing by Russian Defence Ministry
https://t.me/mod_russia_en/208
Joe Biden was the chair or ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 12 years, instrumental in the US war on Iraq. More recently as president he refused Russia’s treaties to safeguard its security. He won’t even talk to Putin. So it’s his war, he wanted it, he’s got it and he won’t take any action to terminate it. Zelensky has no authority to do anything, he’s a US puppet, handled by the CIA. The US likes wars. There’s so much money in them!
America has become an amazing kleptocracy.
Now with their puppet Zelensky they will reap more profits from $Billions in new government defense spending for Ukraine.
Let’s Go Brandon
Zelensky was the most complicit of Ukraine presidents to US neocon plans setting Ukraine out as bearbait. Naturally he shares US neocon desires for a wider war.
For some odd reason no-one in the MSM seems to get, a no-fly zone or any NATO-Russian contact is WWIII. They just keep repeating the demand wearing away resistance to the idea.
Just like no-one seems to get, a non-aligned Ukraine never part of NATO free to troll Russia, is as or more fatal than an officially NATO Ukraine.
The Wiki has probably the most conservative yet accurate maps of the Russo-Ukraine war. They are compelled to use verified public sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Russo-Ukrainian_War_detailed_map
The Saker has the most generous ‘Russian military fanboy’ maps, which come with the disclaimer that maps are only representations of reality, not realty.
https://thesaker.is/day-20-a-few-short-updates/
South Front falls in the middle, with perhaps the most accurate publicly available maps of the war.
https://southfront.org/military-situation-in-ukraine-on-march-17-2022-map-update/
Russia is winning the war, but slowly. The more ground they gain the more troops they need to hold it.
Over 2/3 of Lugansk Oblast has been retaken, but Doestsk is barely changed from Fe. 24.
Kharkiv is particularly difficult because the neo-Nazi PMUs there have mined the city’s experimental nuclear reactor. Russia may never try to storm it, but try and starve it out. However the surrounding area to Izium seems to be well-defended.
Russian forces seem intent on capturing the Yuzhnoukrainsk nuclear power facility further up the Southern Bug River.
Mariupol is an industrial port city, which makes for the messiest urban fighting. It still hasn’t fallen.
Everyone expects Russia to take Odessa with an assault from the sea, but the approach surely is blocked by rising mines. Russia will likely let that go for a while as they don’t have the troops to spare.
The deciding factor on how soon the war turns will be how much food and materiale Kiev forces were able so save when Russia initially spared the Shock and Awe. Once they break, maybe Russia can end the war. Or, they enter into a terrorist conflict as bad as any guerilla war.
Just as IS PMUs in Syria, Kiev Armed Forces and PMUs can fight holed up in civilian areas for a long time.
Keeping them contained takes up Russian manpower, or they will sortie out as they have in Kiev.
You write: “For some odd reason no-one in the MSM seems to get, a no-fly zone or any NATO-Russian contact is WWIII.”
You seem to have gotten your wish, straight from the White House:
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reiterated on Wednesday that the US doesn’t want to enforce a no-fly zone. “As we’ve said before, a no-fly zone would require implementation, it would require us potentially shooting down Russian planes, NATO shooting down Russian planes. And we are not interested in getting into World War III,” she said.
— https://news.antiwar.com/2022/03/17/following-estonia-parliament-of-nato-member-lithuania-calls-for-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine/
However, it is a naive claim at best, irresponsible propaganda at worst. During the Korean war, Chinese and American planes clashed many a time over Korea, yet the US refrained from making any sorties over China itself. Nor was Zelensky suggesting sorties over Russia.
If that’s not enough to convince you, recall the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962: Kennedy announced a blockade against Soviet ships bringing missiles to Cuba. Khrushchev, who was in a far stronger position against NATO than Putin is today, backed down.
I expect Putin would be similarly hesitant against challenging a no-fly zone, especially if it does not include all of Ukraine, or even Kyiv, but is confined to the western one-fourth (roughly) of Ukraine around Lviv, where pro-Russian sentiment is weakest and, as far as I know, there are still no Russian army boots on the ground.
LOL Good little warmonger claiming shooting down Russian planes and bombing Russian air defenses is just fine, won’t lead to any war with Russia! Lucky the Useful Idiots like you aren’t in charge. Only those who use you.
So, Biden and Blinken are “naive” for saying that it would lead to war with Russia. The ONLY time the little sheep disagrees with his masters is when there are even bigger warmongers to be loyal to! LOL
Guys like that should just join the Ukraine International Brigades themselves, not volunteer the rest of us to die first.
China during the Korean War era was not anywhere near the conventional level of threat (let alone nuclear) Russia and the Soviet Union were.
China had entered the Korean war expecting Russian/Soviet
air cover. The threat of direct US-Russian engagement caused Russia to hedge then withdraw earlier assurances of air support.
Fighting the Korean war without air superiority led to greatly disproportionate Chinese casualties on the ground and in the air.
It was bad enough that a handful of Soviet pilots tacitly flew Soviet-supplied MIG-15s under the Chinese flag.
While the need for secrecy limited their contribution, Soviet-flown Chinese MIGs were responsible for significant UN losses in the air. Their participation in the Korean war has still never been formally acknowledged.
MacArthur was relieved from command because of his desire to expand the war into China, which was feared would draw Russian forces officially into the war. That would have made the Korean War, WW III.
The same rules apply in Europe today, with NATO forces fighting under Ukrainian flag strictly on a ‘volunteer’ basis. They so far have been restricted to ground forces participation.
As with the Chinese and North Koreans decades earlier, NATO and Ukraine troops have to fight without air superiority. These are skills that are a sharp departure from anything in their training and experience, but not a weakness the Russians have been able to exploit to maximum effect.
And of course the establishment loyal Peter Nyikos here now IGNORES your links, after braying endlessly “how can yu post dat without adding links for me, if you don’t add links for me dat means yur lying!”
When he does get his links he simply ignores them. He is too lazy to read any facts, denying things he could easily have seen confirmation for if he read the stories and their included links here on Antiwar. But sheep will be sheep. He’s a good little sheep.
That, or part of the NATO/Pentagon cyber-infowar effort.
Not that there’s a shortage of real Western military fanboys in the armchair legions, but they tend to know their stuff and debate honestly.
Zelensky’s speech to our Congress has had a very positive result for him and our companies which make the weapons which the Ukraine will get. Ukraine will get our killer drones. Who will operate them and from where?
The sending of US technology to the battlefield carries the risk of Russian hence Chinese peeks into our military-electronic technology.
What they want is what they get…!
Zelensky spewing propaganda
It doesn’t look like Russia can back down unless they decide to surrender to NATO and I don’t think that is in the cards. So that means we are headed for disaster unless we accept the situation we have created, stop the funny business and work out a compromise. We don’t need comics deciding the future of humanity just because they don’t like their neighbors or have visions of grandeur.
A great little actor. Kolomoisky must be proud of his protegé.
Perhaps this fool should have implemented the MINSK accords and not asked for NATO membership. Ukraine and NATO were specifically warned about this repeatedly since 2004. This conflict was entirely predictable and avoidable and is the direct result of US imperial overreach and the need for military contractors to manufacture enemies and justify their existence. Putin was wrong to invade, sure, but the blame for this conflict lies 100% with the US.
“This conflict was entirely predictable …”
This surreal claim keeps being repeated over and over in response to article after article in Antiwar.com.
The reality is that almost nobody believed that Putin would escalate a dispute over the Donbas into a major war, until Putin actually did it. Even China was caught off guard, and two of Putin’s best friends were taken aback:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/invading-ukraine-putin-loses-allies-eastern-europe-83092142
In particular, Czech President Zeman made it abundantly clear how completely unpredictable Putin’s all-out war was. Quoting from the ABC News article:
Zeman had previously made news by calling Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula “a fait accompli.”
Many in the Czech Republic reviled Zeman as a “servant of Kremlin” after he sided with Russia and cast doubt on the findings of his own security and intelligence services on the alleged participation of Russian spies in a huge 2014 ammunition explosion.
Until just days ago, Zeman was insisting that the Russians wouldn’t attack Ukraine because “they aren’t lunatics to launch an operation that would be more damaging for them than beneficial.”
“I admit I was wrong,” he said Thursday.
Zeman has called for harsh sanctions against Russia, including cutting it out of the SWIFT financial system which shuffles money from bank to bank around the globe.
“It’s necessary to isolate a lunatic and not just to defend ourselves by words but also by deeds,” he said.
https://youtu.be/TD1CNqghN7Q?t=230
” would escalate a dispute over the Donbas into a major war”
You are really disgusting, little leftist, calling the killing of 14,000 people a “dispute” and then claiming that all the people killed are military so that makes it okay. You are a pathetic little sheep repeating the media’s lies. And then you go “waa waaa where’s da proof!” to any post you don’t like.
It wasn’t until the last two weeks before the war that it became apparent that Ukraine with NATO support, was pursuing nuclear arms.
Only during the war, did it also came out that Russia was also long aware of ongoing Pentagon-Ukraine biowarfare research in Ukraine.
Had this WMD information been more widely available in the months leading up to the war, odds are those of us who thought war unlikely would have changed our minds.
WMDs are a guaranteed war trigger.
Until then, Russia had not displayed anything more than ground force sabre rattling. A buildup to the massive air war needed to put down Ukraine’s defense spam and actually fight a real war over such a large geography was not in evidence.