Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy called on people worldwide to gather in public Thursday to show support for his embattled country as US President Joe Biden and other world leaders met for talks focused on pressuring Russia to end the invasion that is entering its second month.
“Come to your squares, your streets. Make yourselves visible and heard,” Zelenskyy said in English during an emotional video address late Wednesday that was recorded in the dark near the presidential offices in Kyiv. “Say that people matter. Freedom matters. Peace matters. Ukraine matters.”
“This is a month now,” Zelenskyy said Thursday in an address to Sweden’s parliament, the latest of many to whom the Ukrainian leader has pleaded for help. “We have not seen a destruction of this scale since World War II.”
After a month of fighting, Western analysts say Ukrainian forces need stocking up again with the weapons that have helped them slow and repel Russian advances. Both sides claimed Thursday to have inflicted more blows. Ukraine’s navy said it sank a ship that had been used to resupply the Russian campaign with armored vehicles. Russia claimed to have taken a town, Izyum, in eastern Ukraine after heavy fighting.