Zelenskyy Calls on Israel To Do More To Help Ukraine in Speech to Lawmakers

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Israel to do more to help his country in an address to the Knesset. The address on Sunday took place on a Zoom call and also was projected on the Habima theater building in central Tel Aviv.

In his address, Zelenskyy asked Israel to send its Iron Dome missile defense system to Ukraine to protect his citizens and to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons. He invoked the Holocaust, calling Russia’s offensive a “final solution” against his people, and noting the Russian use of Nazi terminology in justifying its attack on Ukraine. He reminded the lawmakers that Russian rockets stuck Babi Yar, the site of and memorial to the worst massacre of Jews during World War II.

He said that Ukraine and Israel face the same threat from their respective enemies, namely “the total destruction of our people, our state, our culture, even the name: Ukraine, Israel.” He noted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, the anniversary of the founding in 1920 of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or the Nazi party.

“I reiterate my condemnation of the attack on Ukraine and thank President Zelenskyy for sharing his feelings and the plight of the Ukrainian people with members of the Knesset and the government,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said in a tweet. “We will continue to assist the Ukrainian people as much as we can and we will never turn our backs to the plight of people who know the horrors of war.”