‘We Will Fight To The End’, Ukraine’s President Zelensky Vows

• Zelensky noted that NATO had failed to accede to his demands to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine

• To end the war, Russia had demanded that Ukraine demilitarise and take a neutral stance in international politics

EKO HOT BLOG reports that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, invoking the wartime defiance of British prime minister Winston Churchill, vowed Tuesday to “fight to the end” in a historic virtual speech to UK lawmakers.

“We will not give up and we will not lose,” he said, giving a day-by-day account of Russia’s invasion that dwelt on the costs in lives of civilians including Ukrainian children.

Read also: Russia Gives Ukraine Conditions To End War ( See The Conditions)

“We will fight to the end, at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.

“We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets,” he told the packed chamber, which greeted him with a standing ovation at the start and rose again at the end.

The speech was a conscious echo of Churchill’s landmark address to the House of Commons in June 1940, after British forces were forced to retreat from France in the face of a Nazi German onslaught.

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender,” Churchill said after the retreat at Dunkirk.

Zelensky, wearing a military-green T-shirt and sitting next to Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag, also invoked William Shakespeare as he delivered the chamber’s first-ever virtual speech by a foreign leader.

“The question for us now is, to be or not to be,” he said in his 10-minute speech, which followed similar addresses to members of the US Congress and the European Parliament.

“Now I can give you a definitive answer: it is yes, to be.”

Zelensky, while thanking Western countries for their retaliation against Russia, also noted that NATO had failed to accede to his demands to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Appealing directly to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he said: “But please increase the pressure of sanctions against this country. And please recognise this country as a terrorist state.

“And please make sure that our skies are safe.

“Please make sure that you do what needs to be done and what is stipulated by the greatness of your country.”

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