Zelensky’s Last-Ditch Plea for Peace
The Ukrainian president made a final appeal to the Russian public just hours before the invasion began.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a speech in his native Russian on Thursday, addressing the people of Russia in a last-ditch effort to prevent war. Less than three hours later, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. His speech is reproduced below.
"I would like to address the citizens of Russia directly, not as president but as a citizen of Ukraine, and I address the citizens of Russia as I would the citizens of Ukraine. We share a more than 2,000-kilometer border. Your soldiers are stationed all along it, almost 200,000 soldiers, and thousands of military vehicles. Your leaders have chosen for them to take a step forward into the territory of another country. And that single step could be the beginning of a great war on the European continent.
The whole world speaks of what could happen day to day. A cause for war could arise at any moment. Any provocation, any incident, could be the flare of a fire that burns everything.
- They remember their own past and will build their own future.
- They build, they do not destroy, as they themselves have told you day after day on television.
- The Ukraine in your news and the Ukraine of real life are two entirely different places, and the difference is that the latter is real.
- How can I be a Nazi? Say it to my grandfather, who fought in World War II as a Soviet infantryman and died a colonel in an independent Ukraine.
- However, we are not part of one whole. You cannot swallow us up.
- We are different.
- But this difference is not a reason for enmity.
- We want to determine our own course and build our own history: peacefully, calmly, and honestly.
- Who are we shooting at?
- What are we bombing?
- Donetsk, which I have visited dozens of times? Where I looked in people’s faces, in their eyes?
- Artyoma Street, where I strolled with friends?
- The Donbass Arena, where I rooted for our boys together with Ukrainian lads at the European Championships?
- Shcherbakov Park, where I drank with friends when our boys lost?
- Luhansk, where the mother of my best friend is buried?
- Where his father also rests?
- What will you fight for and with whom?
- Many of you have relatives here.
- Some might have studied at Ukrainian universities and befriended Ukrainians.
- It is not about peace at any cost.
- It is about peace and principles, of justice, of international law.
- It is about the right to self-determination, that every person might determine their own future.
- It is the right of every society, and of every person, to security, to a life without threats.
- Do you Russians want a war?
- I would very much like to know the answer, but that answer depends only on you, on the citizens of the Russian Federation.
Thank you for your attention."
(Translation by Thomas Morley/Foreign Policy)
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