Ukraine ‘alive and kicking’ despite Russia, Zelenskyy tells US Congress

“It’s a nice honor for me to be on the US Congress and converse to you and all Individuals. towards all doom and gloom situations, Ukraine didn’t fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking,” stated Zelenskyy, who obtained a standing ovation when he walked into the chamber.
“We defeated Russia within the battle for the minds of the world,” he stated.

Three members held up a big Ukrainian flag through the ovation.

Following a gathering on the White Home with Democratic President Joe Biden, Zelenskyy’s speech wanted to resonate with a bipartisan viewers of U.S. lawmakers, together with Home of Representatives Republicans, who’ve voiced rising skepticism about persevering with to ship tens of billions of {dollars} to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy joined a protracted listing of world leaders to deal with joint conferences of the Senate and Home, a practice that started in 1874 with a go to by Hawaiian King Kalakaua and included nearly legendary wartime visits by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in addition to kings, queens and one pope.

It is going to additionally mark one of many final occasions Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, presides over the chamber as Speaker of the Home, earlier than Republicans take the bulk on Jan. 3 and he or she returns to the rank and file of her caucus.

Planning for Zelenskyy’s speech started in October, in keeping with a Pelosi aide, when she met with Ruslan Stefanchuk, chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. Pelosi was attending the First Parliamentary Summit of the Worldwide Crimea Platform in Zagreb, Croatia, on the time.

Precisely 300 days after Russian troops invaded and amid intensified rocket assaults which have left Ukrainian cities in ruins, Zelenskiy arrived realizing that the Senate and Home management America’s purse strings.

His timing was excellent, as Congress is on the verge of approving an extra $44.9 billion in new emergency army and financial help, on high of some $50 billion already despatched to Ukraine this 12 months.

FIRST WARTIME TRIP ABROAD

Daniel Fried, former U.S. ambassador to Poland and a fellow on the Atlantic Council, stated Zelenskiy’s journey demonstrated that he and Biden share a perception that the USA, regardless of its faults, is chief of the free world.

Zelenskyy, Fried stated, “didn’t go to Berlin, Brussels, London or Paris” for his first journey overseas for the reason that begin of the conflict.

The 44-year-old Zelenskiy, a former comic and actor, additionally visited Washington on a day that the Senate overwhelmingly confirmed a brand new ambassador to Russia.

The optics of Zelenskyy’s welcome as a defender of democracy carried a message far deeper than army help. It was meant to sign to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the USA and its NATO allies stay steadfastly behind Ukraine, regardless of latest indicators of impatience amongst some Republican lawmakers over the rising price.

When he walked via the Home chamber’s double-wooden doorways – which needed to be barricaded towards rioting supporters of then-President Donald Trump practically two years in the past – the cheers had been accented by some lawmakers carrying blue and yellow, the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

Pelosi often wears a U.S. and Ukraine flag pin. She famous in an look with Zelenskiy forward of his speech that her father, Consultant Thomas D’Alesandro, was current for Churchill’s first tackle to Congress in 1941, early in World Struggle Two.

Most of the Home’s 435 members and the Senate’s 100 attended the speech.

Democratic Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer sported a yellow tie and blue go well with. In a Senate speech he described Zelenskiy as “a frontrunner who’s preventing for his life, preventing for his nation’s survival, and preventing to protect the very concept of democracy.”

For Zelenskyy, whose wartime olive fatigues have develop into globally acknowledged, the Home ignored a rule that usually requires males to put on a jacket and tie contained in the chamber.