In a video address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Kyiv’s Western backers to pick up the “speed” of their decisions on arms deliveries, a veiled reference to Germany’s hesitancy to send heavy tanks to the country.
“The list of calls for decisive, efficient joint actions needs to be expanded with one more: the call for speed. The speed of decision-making,” Zelensky said.
Apparently criticizing the West’s initial reaction to the war, Zelensky said Russia “needed less than one second” to start the war and the world “needed days to react with first sanctions.”
The Ukrainian leader said the supply of “air defense systems must outpace Russia’s next missile attacks” and the supply of “Western tanks must outpace another invasion of Russian tanks.”
Zelensky’s address came after Britain pledged to send its main battle tank, the Challenger 2, and pressure was on Germany to send its Leopard 2 tanks. Other countries that possess the Leopard 2 tanks are willing to send them to Kyiv, including Poland and Finland, but the deliveries still need to be signed off by Berlin.
The issue of tank deliveries is expected to be a major topic of discussion this week during NATO meetings in Brussels and a gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, which is chaired by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
While entirely reliant on the US and its allies for his war effort, Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials are not afraid to criticize their Western backers. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said earlier this month that “no one has done enough” to support Ukraine.
In his WEF address, Zelensky accused some Western countries of taking for granted the “values” that Ukraine is fighting for. “We routinely defend values which some of the allies take for granted – as a fact of life,” he said.
“At Davos, Zelensky Tells Western Backers to Speed Up Arms Deliveries The Ukrainian leader also accused some of his Western allies of taking for granted the ‘values’ Ukraine is ‘defending'”
Just like Hitler, Voldamort Zelensky is capable of mass hypnotism stealing cash and weapons from the world.
This is looking more and more like we will be facing the Russians…. The MIC better get its backside busy and let us know when to duck and cover…If I have to choose between a country’s “values” and my own, I’m going to pick mine every time…
Right. On. DONNA!
“Everybody loves a clown, so why don’t you?
Everybody loves a clown, so why can’t you?”
This Churchill nonsense has really gone to the lad’s head, no? Ordering countries around like he’s some kind of moral or spiritual leader of impeccable character … amazing.
But he’s got a right given Washington got him into it.
Right. Prof. John Mearsheimer said, “We (U.S.) led Ukraine down the primrose path.”
I highly recommend this recent interview with John Mearsheimer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBiV1h7Dm5E
Yes, but more like “The stairway to Hell.” eh?
Couldn’t it be that the USA and its would-be proxies and puppets are both to blame? Why do we have to cast the USA as the Big Bad Wolf/seducer and the Ukies as the poor innocent virginal famers’ daughters? “Primrose path” indeed! The neo Nazis and Zelensky went to war with Russia without so much as one formal, enforceable promise from anyone. Tough noogies if it all falls apart on them now. They can all kiss my butt!
He seems to be playing his role to the hilt. So, I think he’s more of a willing accomplice by now.
Affecting Bibi, his mentor.
Meh. He has no “right” at all. I don’t care who told him what, up to and including Biden. The USA, and no other country either, actually, is obligated to do a damn thing for him or for his POS country.
Well, … “right” then in the perverse sense of the Orwellian rules-based Empire we inhabit??
Zelensky has the “right” to play the role of a Diem or Ky or Thieu, or Chiang Kai-Shek, or Chalabi, or the Shah of Iran, or Ghani, etc. if that’s what you mean. As the leader of a US puppet state, trying to wag the dog, if he can.
Yes, ‘the moral arm’ _like “You got me into this mess, now get me out.” Mostly however it’s the style, the chutzpah, that gets up the nose. But why the omission of his hero, Bibi?
My view is Zelensky got himself into the mess. He’s a big boy. He should know the difference between a NATO Article 5 treaty obligation and a pinkie swear with Joe Biden.
As for Bibi, not sure how he fits in. The US has yet to do anything but worship Israel.
I believe ZelBoy fancies himself as future president of the world.
Is it me? Or are Zelenski’s predictions of a life and death struggle between Russia and Western countries beginning to sound a bit like Chicken Little’s “The sky is falling!”
Of course. Pseudo “presidents” of pseudo “states” that are in reality the puppet creations of the USA always have to cast their local struggles to stay in power as world-historical events, with the fate of the universe hanging in the balance. In reality, Zelenksy, like Theiu or Ghani before him, is of no more importance to the MIC of the USA than a tissue. Once he is used up, and is no longer of any value, he can be discarded without a second thought. All of the “pledges,” all of the fine speeches, the standing ovations, the comparisons to Churchill, the invocations of the “lessons of Munich,” the “slava” this or that, the blah, blah, blahs. They can all be revoked and forgotten in a heartbeat. And the little comedian/con man knows it.
“Put a beggar on horseback, and he’ll ride every time.”
–Shakespeare
Also Mary;
If wishes were horses, even beggars would ride.
The west has given ZelBoy herds of “horses”. What’d he do, shoot ‘em all?
ZelBoy, I believe that the world is growing increasingly irritated with your strident demands.
Here’s a solution: fight your own goddamn war ( which you refuse to negotiate an end to) or get it through your thick head that your country will no longer retain Russian ethnic majority areas. You really think you’re getting Crimea back? Put that coke away!
I’m starting to suspect that Putin is deliberately dragging this war out for as long as possible in a deliberate attempt to bleed NATO states. How many hundreds of billions has NATO collectively flushed down the toilet in Ukraine? Why aren’t the tax-paying citizens rising up in revolt as their elected leaders hand out THEIR money like it’s candy?
On the “defense” end of things, they’ve been handing out that money like candy for more than 80 years now.
All regimes have mechanisms for transferring wealth from the productive class to the political class, and in the post-WW2 US the main mechanism is the military-industrial complex.
The thing about such mechanisms is that they start as a “necessity,” then become a seemingly minor drain on the real productive economy, and then grow and grow and grow because the greed of the political class is bottomless. Before Ukraine it was Afghanistan and Iraq Round 2. Before that, they were piecing together minor Enemies of the Week for about a decade between the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and 9/11, and they don’t want to go back to that 1990s hand-to-mouth, they want it all, as fast as they can get it. If peace breaks out in Ukraine tomorrow, there will be another major way (probably China/Taiwan) ready to uncork to keep those military contracts moving.
Soooooo well-said Thomas!
Oh yeah, since it’s for “defense” then the expenditures are completely justified.
(they should be honest and rename the department to the previous “Department of War”).