Volodymyr Zelensky’s Munich Security Conference speech slams U.S. calls for Ukraine to compromise without Russian concessions, citing 6,000+ monthly drones and 150+ missiles targeting cities like Kyiv while praising the Pearl program (15B USD/12B EUR in Western aid). He demands EU/NATO membership, sanctions on Russia’s oil refineries, and blocking its tankers—highlighting Putin’s refusal to negotiate without Ukraine’s disarmament. Without unified offensive support and security guarantees, Zelensky warns, Putin may exploit post-war divisions to crush Ukraine’s sovereignty permanently. [Automatically generated summary]
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talked about support from the West for his country during the Russian invasion.
He spoke at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
President Zelensky criticizes U.S. calls for Ukraine to make compromises while refusing to make demands on Russia.
He also takes part in a panel discussion with NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda and U.S. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who heads the Armed Services Committee.
Dear friends, thank you for your attention to Ukraine, Ukrainian people, and for supporting our independence and our Ukrainians.
And I want to especially thank those who stand with us not only in words or not only in emotions, not only in the hope for more security, but in real action, in real work, in concrete help, like Germany, like Mark, like Ursula, Antonio, Roberta, and all our friends from the United States and all our European friends.
Thank you so much for all your support.
Thank you.
And if you are a European leader and you meet Mark Rutte, you will definitely hear the word Pearl.
And not just once.
And very serious things, really.
He starts and ends every conversation with a call to support Plorl.
And his right to do so.
Thank you, Mark.
Pearl is a problem, is a program that allows us to buy Patriot missiles in the United States and other weapons that protect Ukrainians from Russian attacks, of course.
Most of the air defense missiles that can stop Russian ballistic missiles come to us thanks to Pearl.
And Pearl exists because of Europe.
It's true.
Europe is paying for our ability to stop ballistic attacks.
Thanks everyone who helps us.
Thank you.
And honestly, one of the worst things a leader can hear in wartime is a report from the Air Force commander saying the air defense units are empty.
Empty.
And they used their missiles to stop Russian strikes.
And there was no resupply.
And intelligence says a new massive attack may come in a day or two.
Sometimes we manage to deliver new missiles for our Patriots or Nassims just before an attack, and sometimes at the last, very last moment.
And I want to especially thank Germany, Norway, Netherlands for their strong leadership in Europe in giving us air defense systems.
Thank you very much.
These systems save our lives.
And thanks to every European leader who invests in Pearl and in other joint defense programmes.
And I'm proud of our soldiers who repelled Russian attacks and of our logistic teams who have kept this system working for four years.
And I'm proud of our nation and it is the courage and resilience of Ukrainians that make the defense, that make the difference.
And our people deserve gratitude.
They deserve respect.
Thank you so much.
Four years of full-scale war today, I want to show you what that really means.
And I want you to ask yourselves: are you ready not only for the challenges that Russian aggression brings, the challenges of modern war, but also for the constant effort to convince the world to fight for support, to defend your country's interests every single day, as Ukraine must do.
The world is built on interests, and you have to work tirelessly to align interests and help partners see what this brings.
And when you see what is coming, we will be able to convince those in power to act preventively, to stop the evil before it destroys everything.
Right now, right now, you can see a visualization of one of Russia's attacks.
Many of you were already here in Munich when this strike took place.
Russia launched twenty-four ballistic missiles, one air-launched guided missile, and two hundred can you imagine two hundred nineteen attack drones against our cities, Kiev, Nipro Odessa.
Just one attack, just one night.
Our air defence used the missiles that arrived from our partners just a few days earlier.
They came on Sunday, it's true.
And on Thursday night, the missiles were already protecting our skies.
And that is just one night, but Russian attacks happen almost every night in Ukraine, and at least once a week, massive strikes.
Still, Ukraine has endured 1,451 days of full-scale war, longer than anyone predicted.
And I want you to understand the real scale of these attacks on Ukraine.
As you can see, in just one month this January, we had, yeah, you see it, we had to defend against 6,000 attack drones.
Most of them were Shahid drones.
And 150-plus Russian missiles of different types.
And more than 5,000 glide bombs.
And it's like these every month.
Imagine this over your own city, shattered streets, destroyed homes, schools built underground.
And this is daily life in Ukraine because of, of course, because of Russia, for four long years.
Russia uses many ballistic missiles and carries out combined attacks.
Most of the strikes target our power plants and other critical infrastructure.
And there is not a single power plant left in Ukraine that has not been damaged by Russian attacks.
Not one.
But we still generate electricity.
thanks to our people and we have kept our system running thanks to physical protection of the facilities and thanks to everyone who helps us with air defense just as important ukraine still has power because of our people thousands of workers who serve millions
And when I see our energy workers, our repair crews, rescue teams, I see something that is often missing in politics.
Through dedication, the ability to work at 100%, to act immediately in a real emergency, not in a month, not in a year or two, but they save lives here.
They save lives now.
All these years.
And many politicians could learn and must, I think, must learn from ordinary rescuers, from ordinary repair crews, from ordinary electricians to act, how to act immediately.
During this war, thank you during this war, weapons evolve faster than political decisions meant to stop them.
When the Iranian regime first gave Russia the Shahid drones, they were simple weapons.
They could be shut down easily.
Now the Shahid is different.
It has a jet engine.
It can fly at different altitudes.
It can be guided by an operator in real, by the way, in real time.
And it can use Starlink to reach its target.
It can even carry other drones, acting as the, how we say, mother drone for FPVs.
War reveals forms of evil we did not expect.
And the longer a war continues, the more resources the aggressor receives.
The more dangerous the consequences becomes, the more dangerous the evolution of weapons and of war itself and the evolution of Putin.
And I remember how the full-scale war was seen in the first year.
And we were told that support would continue, but not at the scale and speed needed for Ukraine to win, it's true, or for Russia to lose.
And what did that mean?
It meant time.
The idea was that America could manage the pace of the war and the risk of escalation to reach a point where Russia would no longer be able to attack and Ukraine would agree not to return its occupied territories.
Bob Woodward wrote about this approach of the previous US administration in his book War.
And he described how US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, we own the clock.
And Austin had told Jake Saliman numerous times, numerous times, we own the clock.
And Woodward writes that Salivan was constantly learning from him.
And of course, we are grateful, we are grateful for all the supplies we received.
But you saw how it was, how long we had to push, to push, to push, to be allowed to get stronger and stronger weapons.
Months for HIMARS, months for tanks, years for aircraft.
Everything took time.
This did not make the situation easier for anyone because in war, in war, the war itself owns time.
And it uses the time against people, of course.
That is why not a single day, not a single opportunity to protect life can be wasted.
Everyone who seeks security and peace must understand this.
Every day matters.
And I'm grateful to every American heart that was helping us no matter what.
Thank you.
Without you, Americans, Europeans, and everyone who stands with us, it would have been very, very difficult to hold on.
Thank you very much.
Right now, on the streets of Munich and other cities, people are calling for support for freedom in Iran.
We saw it.
And Ukraine does not share a border with Iran.
And we have never had a conflict of interests with the Iranian regime.
But the Iranian Shahid drones they sold to Russia are killing especially our people, Ukrainians, and destroying our infrastructure.
The Iranian regime has already done and can still do more harm than many other regimes could do in the century.
And yet, this regime still exists.
And it hopes to survive everything, even this crisis.
Today, the people of Iran expect from the world what we in Ukraine needed on February 24th, when the Russian invasion began.
Unity, determination, and speed.
Of course, speed.
Speed in support.
And regimes like the one in Iran must not be given time.
When they have time, they only kill more.
They must be stopped immediately.
And this is exactly what should have happened with the Ayatollah after all the wars his regime unleashed and all the lives it took.
And with Putin, with Putin as well, after the war in Georgia, after Syria, after 2014 and the occupation of Crimea.
But even in these conditions, when we cannot know how long this war will last, we do everything to keep life going.
And today, Ukraine has more experience than anyone in the world in defending against all types of drones.
Every night, every night, we face fewer than 100 Shahidrons.
Some nights, there are 400 or even 500 attack drones.
And Ukrainians shut down almost 90.
Can you imagine?
90% of them.
But still, not 100.
And we are doing everything to increase that rate.
Among other tools, we use different types of interceptors.
And what you see now are real videos of those interceptors, by the way.
Together with our partners, we are producing more and more of them each day.
And we will reach the point where we produce enough.
Enough to make Shahidrons meaningless for Russia.
But the key words here are together.
Together with partners.
And there is no country in Europe that could rely only on its own technology and money to defend itself.
In a full-scale war, no one would stand alone.
That is why, while we invest in interceptors and protection, Russia invests in breaking unity between all of us.
Our unity with you, unity in Europe, unity in the Euro-Atlantic community.
They want to break it.
Why?
Because our unity is the best interceptor against Russia's aggressive plans.
The best one.
we still have it.
And I want to thank you, each of you who keeps unity alive and makes it stronger.
Our unity is what protects us.
Hundreds of production sites are already operating in Ukraine and a partner countries.
And we have the Danish model, thanks, Matter, your team, your people, investing in weapons production in Ukraine.
We have joint drone production here in Germany.
And it officially started yesterday, thanks to everybody and to Friedrich.
And we have the joint artillery initiative with Czechia.
I see Petr.
Hi.
Thank you so much.
And we are doing a lot together with the Nordic countries, with the UK and France, Netherlands, Italy, and Poland, and the United States, Canada, and Turkey.
There are important changes in Japan, thanks to Prime Minister government.
And we all value that Japan stands with us in the coalition of the willings.
And there are strong decisions from Europe, including 90 billion euros for two years for us.
Thank you so much, and this is a serious guarantee of Ukraine's financial stability.
And thank you for every strong decision, for all our joint work.
But let's not close our eyes to the problem.
And Russia still has accomplices, regimes like North Korea and companies across the globe, many of them from China that bypass sanctions and provide components for Russian weapons, Russian missiles.
On top of that, Putin still has guarantees of financial stability.
A large part of those guarantees lies here in Europe, in European seas.
I mean, Russian oil tankers still move freely, freely along Europe's shores, in the Baltic Sea, in the North Sea, and in the Mediterranean.
In total, Russia still uses more than 1,000 tankers.
Each of them is, in fact, a floating bullet for the Kremlin.
And I recently discussed this with President Macron, with President von der Leyen, and with other leaders, and thanked them for their willingness to fix this.
We spoke about updating European legislation so that Russian tankers cannot only be detained but blocked.
This is important to block all these tankers and they are all confiscated the way the United States acts against shadow-list tankers near its own shores.
And it works, really.
Without all money, Putin would not have money for this war.
Let's make it possible.
And now I want to speak about the cost.
Cost of war on the ground.
What does one month of war mean for Putin?
Just in December, our forces eliminated 35,000 occupying soldiers, killed and badly wounded.
In January, there were fewer Russian assaults, and as a result, Russia's losses were about 30.
About 30,000 killed and badly wounded.
There is even a clear price Russia pays for every kilometer of occupied Ukrainian land.
On the Donetsk front, it's one of the most intense areas, and everybody knows about it.
The price Russia pays for one kilometer now is 156 soldiers.
Putin is not concerned about this now, but there is a level at which he will start to care, I'm sure.
Every month, Russia mobilizes about 40,000 people, a little bit more, 42, 43.
Sometimes not all of them reach the front line.
So overall, the size of the Russian contingent in Ukraine is not growing this year.
For our army, the mission is clear, to destroy more Russian occupiers, because they are occupiers.
And the goal is specific, at least 50,000 per month.
Even for Russia, that would be serious, I'm sure.
And it would affect Putin's decisions because we are speaking mainly about frontline troops, those leading the assaults and attacks.
Mr. Isinger said in an interview before this conference that as long as Ukraine is defending Europe, the danger is not so great.
And if we speak plainly and maybe a bit cynically, that is more or less the situation today.
But look at the price.
Look at the price.
Look at the pain Ukraine has gone through.
Look at the suffering Ukraine has faced.
It's Ukrainians who are holding the European front.
Behind our people stand an independent Poland and the free Baltic states.
There can be a sovereign Moldova and Romania without dictatorship.
And even one victor can think about how to grow his belly, not how to grow his army to stop Russian tanks from returning to the streets of Budapest.
But none of our people choose to be such heroes Ukraine did not choose this war.
And it's wrong to assume that this is a permanent arrangement that others can stay safe behind Ukraine backs forever.
Ukrainians are people, people, not terminators.
Our people are dying too.
That is why we are doing everything to stop this war and to guarantee security.
But the problem is this, Putin is no longer interested in anything else.
Putin does not live like ordinary people.
He doesn't walk the streets.
You will not see him in a cafe.
His grandchildren do not go to the normal kindergartens in their hometown.
He cannot imagine life without power or after power.
Normal things do not interest him.
Putin consults more with Tsar Peter and Empress Catherine about territorial gains than with any living person about real, real life.
Can you imagine Putin without war?
Be honest.
Right now his focus is on Ukraine and no one in Ukraine believes he will ever let our people go, but he will not let other European nations go either because he cannot let go of the very idea of war.
He may see himself as a Tsar, but in reality he is a slave to war.
And if he lives another 10 years, we can understand it can be war can return or expand.
That is why we say there must be real security guarantees for Ukraine and for Europe.
Strong security guarantees.
And we know clearly what those guarantees must include.
And we have strong agreements ready to sign with the United States and with Europe.
We think that the agreement on security guarantees should come before any agreement to end the war.
Those guarantees answer the main question, how long there will be no war again.
And we hope President Trump hears us.
We hope the Congress hears us.
We hope American people hear us.
And we are grateful for all the real help.
Thank you.
We are doing everything, truly, everything to end this war.
And this war can end and security can be guaranteed.
Before the invasion began, we told the world, act now, please, act preventively so the invasion does not happen.
And I sent our commander-in-chief at that time, it was General Zaluzhny, to speak with the American side and to explain what Ukraine needed to defend itself.
And I said, tell them we need javelins, stingers, and real weapons, something real to stop the Russian army so they see we are not standing with bare hands.
It was very important, but the most practical advice General Milly could give Ukraine at that time was simply dig trenches.
And that is the answer my commander-in-chief brought back.
Just imagine hundreds of thousands of Russian troops on your borders, massive military equipment, and all you hear is dig trenches.
So if Russian troops enter Lithuania, God bless, no, just like example, if, or another country on NATO, NATO's eastern flank, what will the Allies hear then?
Will they hear that help is on the way?
Hope so.
Or will they hear dig trenches or something else?
We must have the ability to give a strong response to that threat.
And that is why we are talking about a joint European defense policy.
That is why we need American backstop.
That is why Europe needs Ukraine.
The Ukrainian army is the strongest army in Europe.
Thanks to our heroes.
And it's simply, I think, it's simply not smart to keep this army outside NATO.
But at the very least, let that be your, friends, your decision, not Putin's decision.
Please.
And today, among the things that unite Europe most strongly, there is also fear, not fear that Ukraine might one day join NATO, but fear about whether NATO will even exist.
But we support NATO and hope that NATO will be each day stronger and stronger.
God bless.
And right now, much of our cooperation with Europe and with other NATO partners and cooperation inside the alliance, including the historic decision to move toward 5% of GDP on defense, is a response to that fear.
I think it's a correction of past mistakes and it is an investment in the future, security.
And it is a guarantee that NATO will not only exist, but will act if, God forbid, it's ever needed.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, more and more often now many former officials from different countries say that, say they warned about this war and that they said the invasion would happen.
They remember what they said and in most cases they greatly improved their own story, but none of them can say what they actually did, what they did to prevent the invasion.
And he was disqualified at the Olympics simply for the intention to wear a helmet showing the faces of athletes killed by Russia in this war.
And he was disqualified for the intention.
When in 2021 we clearly saw Putin's intent and asked for preventive sanctions to stop the invasion.
We were told first there must be a crime and only then can there be punishment.
And Kamala Harris, I remember, said this, but with Russia, you cannot leave a single loophole Russians can use to start a war.
And they say in Russia, first get into the fight and then we'll see what happens.
That is how they do everything.
That is how they start wars.
And that is how they conduct negotiations, not to end the war, but to avoid ending it and just to buy time.
As people now look back at the time before the Russia's Russian invasion, what will be said about this moment four years from now?
And will some of today's powerful leaders look for ways to avoid responsibility and to justify themselves?
There were different options before the invasion.
There are options now.
I think so.
And when we say that Russia must not be rewarded for this war, we are saying the same thing we said before the invasion.
Russia must not be given hope that it can get away with this crime.
Everyone must respond already at the stage of intent, the intent to kill the temptation to continue aggression.
Please remember the moment when Russia began to take diplomacy most seriously during these four years.
It was when our deep strikes against Russian oil refineries began to work and when everyone started talking about tomahawks.
That shows exactly how to deal with Russia and what Russia actually hears, it hears strengths.
The stronger we are, the more realistic peace becomes.
A lot of time now is spent on negotiations.
We truly, we truly hope that the trilateral meetings next week will be serious, substantive, helpful for all of us.
But honestly, sometimes it feels like the sites are talking about completely different things.
The Russians often speak about some spirit of anchorage.
And we can only guess what they really mean.
The Americans often return to the topic of concessions.
And too often those concessions are discussed in the context only of Ukraine, not Russia.
Europe is practically not present at the table.
It's a big mistake to my mind.
And it is we, I think we Ukrainians, we Ukrainians who are trying to bring Europe fully into the process so that Europe's interests and voice are taken into account.
This is very important.
And Ukraine keeps returning to one simple point.
Peace can only be built on clear, clear security guarantees.
Where there is no clear security system, war always returns.
Ukraine will do everything, truly everything, to make these negotiations successful.
We have invested in this process and we are in constant contact with Steve Vitkov, with Jared Kushner and with everyone President Trump appoints.
Today we are meeting with Secretary of State Marko Rubio and Ukraine wants the result of all these efforts to be real security and real peace.
Real peace.
Not what came out of Geneva in 2021.
Not what the Russians hope for from this so-called spirit of anchorage.
And it seems Putin hopes to repeat Munich and not Munich 2007 when they only spoke about dividing Europe, but Munich 1938 when previous Putin began dividing Europe in reality.
It would be an illusion to believe that this war can now be reliably ended by dividing Ukraine, just as it was an illusion to believe that sacrificing Czechoslovakia would save Europe from a great war.
And when people ask today what the price of a deal could be, our answer is simple.
The main thing is that in four years the civilized world is not forced to justify itself again, to shift the responsibility and not forced again to look for someone else to blame.
Dear friends Ukraine is ready for a deal that brings real peace to us to Ukraine to Europe and And I'm confident that this war can be ended and ended with dignity.
This is the most important for us, with dignity.
And we have given our partners everything we believe such a deal must include.
And we are ready to invest in common security, everything we have learned while defending ourselves during these years of this war.
And we can clearly answer most of the security questions that were raised at the conference yesterday and that will be raised today.
And right now, as we work together to protect lives in Ukraine, we are building a new system, a new security, a new response architecture, new approaches to protect lives in any European country when needed.
Our wall of drones is your wall of drones.
Our expertise in drones is a part of your security.
Our ability to stop assaults and Russian sabotage can also be part of your defense.
Europe needs a real common defense policy, just as it already has so much in common in the economy, in law, and in social policy.
Please pay attention to Ukraine.
And if exactly that had happened earlier, this war would not have begun.
We have spoken at this conference for the last four years.
And I just wanted to point out before we start the conversation that your Nobel laureate and human rights activist has pointed out that in the year of the Trump administration, so-called peace negotiations, more people have been killed and injured on both sides than in any other previous year, and certainly more civilians, particularly obviously in Ukraine.
Can I, before I answer the question, just share with you two things I saw myself last week in Kiev.
I was with a small team of colleagues from NATO.
First of all, I saw you saw one of the pictures here of the impact of five missiles taking out one of these huge heating plants.
And we do not always realize in this part of Europe that when it comes to Kiev and the big cities, they are heated centrally.
So what Russians did was five missiles take out this heating plant responsible for heating the homes of a quarter of a million people.
That plant will be down at least for two months.
That means that these people, and it was minus 25 degrees last week in Kiev during night and minus 15 degrees during day, that they are living in those conditions.
When you speak with the people, they are telling me, hey, keep on supporting us.
We will not give in.
It only makes them almost stronger despite the terrible difficulty they are facing.
Then I was the next day in Cherniev.
And Cherniev was occupied for four to six weeks, directly after February 22.
And I spoke with people who were kept in the basement of a school the size of the first three rows of this room.
150 people, there were only chairs we could sit on.
Ten people died in that room.
They were not able to bury them.
This is the Russians.
This is the lack of decency, of humanity.
For six weeks these people were kept there.
I looked in the eyes of these two people who showed me around there.
They told me, we are resilient.
We will never give in, but tell this story to other people what the Russians did here.
And others of us have been in Bucha and other places around Kiev.
This was in Cherniev, about two kilometers, two hours' drive from Kiev.
And then I met Patron.
And Patron is a dog.
And the dog is responsible.
And he's a sort of hero of Ukraine now because he sniffs when people are taking rubble away and there is a risk of new explosions coming up.
And he is excellent at this.
And I agree with you.
The untold story of this war is the heroes from the firefighters, from the ambulance services, from all these people.
Of course, the soldiers.
They're amazing.
But sometimes we forget about the police and the firefighters and all the other civilian people who are helping to take out this rubber, etc.
And this dog, I even looked the dog in the eye and he told me we will never give in.
For Ukraine to stay strong in this fight, to stay strong in this fight, one, we have to realize the Russians are not winning this.
As you said, they lost 65,000 people in December and in January.
They are not winning this.
They make very small gains in Donetsk and other places, so small that it's almost not relevant.
But they lose all these people.
If there is a dictator in Moscow willing to do that, we are really working with somebody who is willing to do that, to get so many of his own people killed in that war.
We have to take that seriously.
Because this is crazy behavior at every level.
So what we need to do here in this room, in all our positions, the politicians and everybody who can influence this, is to make sure that these people who are staunch, who are defending themselves, who will never give up, that they have the offensive stuff they need, so that is all the missiles, etc., to hit whatever they need to hit in Russia and of course the ammunition, but particularly also to take out the missiles coming into Ukraine.
Because this is not hitting the home, the front line.
This is hitting the cities, the innocent civilians, the civilian infrastructure, only to create chaos and panic so that the soldiers on the front line are thinking of their families back in Kiev, thinking, oh, maybe you should go back to Kiev because my family is now living in terrible conditions.
This is the only reason to do that.
And we have that.
The US is still supplying massive amounts of this stuff into Ukraine.
This is the Pearl program paid for by Canada and European allies.
That will cost this year 15 billion dollars, 12 billion euros.
It's crucial that that money is there.
And then of course the Europeans and the Canadians doing all the bilateral stuff.
And please use what Sakur, the Supreme Allied Commander, has drawn up together with the Ukrainians, the list of stuff they need.
Don't give bilateral stuff outside that list because it is nice.
It gives you nice pictures and photographs in the newspapers.
But we know exactly what they need.
We have thanks to Jens, this whole structure was set up under his Secretary Generalship, Visbara, the commander, and it is working excellently.
So please use that list, the comprehensive Ukraine requirement list, and then Pearl, which is all the stuff the US is supplying.
And the second part of that, the other side of that coin, is putting enough pain on Putin, as you have said, and as others have said, to actually get serious about a serious negotiation.
But in his speech, in his speech, he mentioned Ukraine only in passing, and the words were elusive peace.
So we'll get to that in a minute.
Roberta Metzolo, for Europe, you saw a call to arms today from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from Prime Minister Starmer, really rebuilding Europe's military-industrial complex.
What, though, can you do now?
How come you haven't managed to get all those money of Russia that you could actually give to Ukraine?
And most of the Europeans agree with it.
Why can't you just get it done and put pressure on Putin, as President Zelensky says, and as it's patently clear, that there is not enough pressure on Putin yet?
He doesn't feel enough pain.
unidentified
On that, we agree.
Next week, I will sign a 90 billion Euro loan to Ukraine, agreed in under four weeks, in an unprecedented speed.
You might say it took us too long.
We used to do things much slower before.
But when push came to shove, we really put our money where our mouth is.
And this is what we need to use as the strongest of messages that when I first came to Ukraine, a few couple of weeks into the beginning of the war, Volodymyr, I told you that we would stand with you.
And I preside over a parliament where the majorities are huge.
And I want to say this because every second question, wherever we go, we're asked, but there's fatigue and people are looking away and you're losing your priorities on what you should do.
My answer is, I was in the opening of the Winter Olympics one week ago, and the loudest cheer was for the Ukrainian delegation.
And that is what shows spontaneously that the people of Europe are with you.
What have we done since the 24th of February 2022?
So we have the immense increase in GDP expenditure on defense.
That's also thanks to your leadership, Mark.
Secondly, we have adopted an unprecedented number of sanctions in terms of packages.
We're waiting for the 28th package now.
We are working and agreed with Volodymyr when he talked about the next step on what we should do on the shadow fleet.
We have two new members in NATO, and this is particularly personal for me because one of my sons is serving in the military of one of them.
And that is what would never have been done if it were not for Ukrainians fighting for the freedom that we took for granted, that we looked away, that we took too long to respond to.
But I would say that today we are there, we will be there, we need to take it to the next step.
On enlargement, I can answer.
I preside over a parliament massively in favor of that.
This is a win-win.
It's not about charity.
We need Ukraine.
And we need Ukraine to be part of the European family.
As President Zelensky pointed out, still Russian tankers are patrolling your waters with their sixth have been detained, but we have to do much more.
Okay.
Senator Wicker, senior senator, Republican senator.
What more can the United States do?
We've had a year of so-called negotiations in which every time we look around, it appears that President Trump puts more pressure on President Zelensky than on President Putin.
There is a package of sanctions that's ready to go, I understand, both houses of Congress.
And what we've just heard from Europe is very good news.
What we need specifically is we need for the administration to unleash the Tomahawk missiles.
And that's a message that will come from the Congress.
It's the decision of the administration.
But the very good news, in addition to the good news about messages of reassurance today and the support that this room has shown, we will be able to vote in two weeks' time on sanctions.
And what Ukraine really needs is for Russia to run out of oil.
And if we pass meaningful, serious sanctions on the oil producers, on, say, the eight refineries around the world that Russia depends on, that can bring a meaningful change in the negotiations.
Some other good news.
Public opinion in favor of Ukraine in the United States is growing.
Public opinion among Republicans being polled is growing in the United States.
And we're in a position with the sanctions bill, perhaps next week, for this to be a turning point.
The FT reports that you are prepared to announce a plan for presidential elections and a referendum on a peace deal, that you're prepared to announce that even potentially by the end of this month.
But that's his previous and his current strength, right?
Communication.
Can I ask you, even the Chinese foreign minister, as he was talking and addressing today, did the whole Russian trope about having to talk about the historical reasons and the preconditions and this and that for a ceasefire.
What do you see as the vital security guarantees that need to be in place?
And so far Russia has said no to even an international monitoring force of Europeans.
So what do you see is a realistic security guarantee?
Well, let's first of all, answering to the Wang Yi, to the Chinese thing, conclude together that there was absolutely no reason whatsoever for the Russians to invade Ukraine, not in 2014, with Korea, Crimea, not a full-scale onslaught on Ukraine starting late February 2022.
So this is absolutely, absolutely not true.
Then, when it comes to security guarantees, the third thing which is crucial is for NATO, that NATO came back together.
In the last couple of days, there has been a huge shift in mindset within NATO, where the Europeans are now taking more of a leadership role in NATO, where the Europeans take more responsibility for their own defence, and this is making us stronger because it anchors the United States stronger in the NATO alliance.
It answers a request from them.
And for Ukraine to stay strong, it is important that the thirty-two NATO allies are stronger together.
So I really believe NATO is stronger now than it was ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
And we are now ready also to help Ukraine, not as an alliance, we will do that, individual allies, and this brings me to the security guarantees.
We need security guarantees at three levels.
Level one is the Ukrainian armed forces.
They have to be so strong and so well trained.
And of course, they are already battle-hardened, that they can, first of all, of course, defend themselves.
Then we need, and this is the leadership of Macron and Starmer within Europe, the Coalition of the Willing, many other countries participating in Europe, Canada, and also, by the way, more and more the US getting involved, or come to that, but the Coalition of the Willing nations in NATO, but also outside NATO, working together to make sure that they will contribute whatever is necessary to make sure that Putin will never ever try again to invade Ukraine after the peace deal or a long-term ceasefire.
So no repeat of Budapest 94, no repeat of Minsk 2014-2015.
And then the third element is the Americans.
It was a crucial moment when the American President Trump said in August, I want to be part of that.
I want to be participating.
And then we articulated the Ukrainians and the Americans and the coalition of the willing what that will be.
And this is exactly as the President said, as Volonimir said, in January we had a meeting in Paris, very successful with the Americans, where I would say 95, 96, 97% of the security guarantees now done.
So this is crucial because that means that when that peace deal is there, we can make sure collectively with the Ukrainian armed forces as the first line of defence that the Russians do not attack again.
But obviously to do that, you need Putin to play bull.
What I am seeing, what the Americans are doing consistently since February, under President Trump's leadership, Marko Rubio, Steve Witkov, Jared Kushner, is they are testing the Russians to see whether they are serious.
If we agree that only the American president was able to break the deadlock with Putin, I think it was only him, because he is the leader of the mightiest nation on earth, a quarter of the world economy, the mightiest military on earth.
He did that in February.
He broke the deadlock.
And never, no one expected this to end soon.
It is an extremely difficult situation we are dealing with.
And the most important issue here is not Zelensky or the Ukrainian team.
They are willing to play bull.
They want this to end as soon as possible.
Nobody wants to prolong this.
So it is the Russians who have to play ball.
And this is exactly why the Lindsay Graham-Blumenthal law now, or whatever you call it in the US law or the sanctions bill.
The sanctions bill, sorry, the sanctions bill you have now in the Senate is so important.
What the President did himself, putting sanctions on Rosnev and Luke Oil, what he did with the secondary sanctions on India and China when it comes to oil delivery, still oil buying from Russia.
This is all important.
This is putting pressure on the Russians.
The Europeans doing that with their sanction packages.
One problem.
China is the main sanction circumventor in the world and therefore the main contributor to Russia to the war effort.
Of course, together with North Korea and Iran and Belarus.
Senator Wicker, as far as I gather, and you can confirm, that Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not choose to go to the special Berlin format meeting of all the President Zelensky, Mark Rutter, and the other leaders.
What do you think that signals?
And do you think, as Secretary General Ruther says, that the United States is absolutely committed to a fair and just peace and is willing to do the work for it?
When I say the United States, I mean this administration.
We are just about to head to the fifth anniversary, so it's an important and serious situation.
President Mezzola, you heard Secretary General Rutter talk about, and we've read in the press, about certain American commands in NATO being transferred to Europeans.
Is Europe ready for that?
Does Europe welcome that?
Is that the beginning of a, I don't know how to call it anymore, a decoupling, a de-risking, going your own way?
I know you're shaking your head, and we'll get to you.
unidentified
I don't see it like that.
I think we're living in a time of new geopolitics, and everything that we're used to is over in all respects.
I was particularly struck by what President Zelensky said in his speech, where he said that the one aim of President Putin is to cause division.
There is nothing that keeps him going before his people more than a rhetoric that the US and the Europeans are split, that the European countries between them are not aligned.
I will not fall into that trap.
What I will say is that the European Union has, perhaps better late than never, after years of perhaps doing less, stood up to say that we need to do more.
We need to spend more.
We need to create more.
We need to help Ukraine develop more.
And if we manage that, then how NATO is run, I'll leave that to your capable hands, Mark.
But from a European perspective, we would also be able to be ready for anything.
And readiness is in itself a deterrence.
If we are going to be really, let's say, forward-looking and self-confident, I think we also lost that in the last few years, that we are able to have enough tools to stand up and be counted, then the U.S. cannot go alone just like we could not go alone.
And this is something that we need to be able to say if we want to send a message for Russia and Putin's administration.
And the cynicism with which we are discussing elections in Ukraine.
When did we have fair elections in Russia?
When are we going to be able to say that if there are bombs falling on cities, you cannot force those people without electricity to go to vote?
And this is a cynical plot that we're falling into, and we absolutely should not allow it to.
I've been told three more minutes, so I want to ask you a question and then give you, President, the last word.
Just quickly, after the Davos speech, after Prime Minister Kearney talked about a rupture and having to have a new arrangement, you said to your members, if you think that we can manage our own security without the United States, you're dreaming.
Is that your position now or do you think there does need to be some kind of moving away from...
What I'm seeing is a total unity of vision coming together in two steps.
Step one was the summit in The Hague, where we agreed to spend 5% on defense, 3.5% on core defense.
That for the first time in history will equalize what the Europeans are spending with what the Americans are spending.
What I'm hearing from the Americans, everybody in America understands why NATO is important not only for Europe or Canada, but also for the safety and collective security of the United States itself.
They are completely committed to Article 5.
There is one big expectation that the Europeans would step up, spend more, and that happened in The Hague.
What then happened over the last couple of weeks, and I saw the culmination point of this with the defense ministers this week, with British Kolbe, the main policy guy in the Pentagon speaking there, the Under Secretary of War.
What I saw there is a unity of vision, saying Europe will gradually take more responsibility for its own defense.
Europe will take more of a leadership role within NATO, but completely with the US anchored in NATO, having a strong conventional and of course nuclear presence in Europe going forward.
But acknowledging collectively that the United States has more to take care of than Europe, also the inner Pacific, also their own hemisphere.
And that's only logical and we need that.
And that's why I was speaking today yesterday with the Defense Minister of Japan, the Foreign Minister of Japan.
Good to see you.
The Foreign Minister of Japan today, I was on the phone with the President of Korea this week.
I will meet the Australians and the New Zealanders here because there is that strong connection and cooperation between NATO and Indo-Pacific.
It's only right for the US to also pivot more there.
But there will be going forward a strong presence here in Europe of the United States, both nuclear and conventional, but it is totally logic.
This is one of the richest, richest places in the world, Europe.
We have huge economies that we take more care of our own events, take more leadership there.
And there's a reason why in NATO, and this started a couple of years ago, that now a discussion has been finalized where the joint force commands will over time be led by Europeans and the component commands, so Aircom and MARCOM and LENDCOM, will be led by the Americans.
And the Supreme Allied Commander being an American going forward.
So this is crucial.
NATO absolutely today stronger than ever since the fall of the Bernie Wall.
I hope that we will involve more and we will work on it, more European colleagues.
Then I really hope that we will have support from the United States, from administration and Congress on security guarantees.
We need their voting.
I hope that we will have security guarantees very, very clear for, sorry, but first of all for our people, that our people will know what will be if Russia will come again.
What answer will our strongest supporter, United States, strategic partner, will answer?
What answer will European leaders will do if the aggression will be again?
This is very important.
Then we really want to work on EU membership.
And I know that some European leaders are not happy with my rhetoric and messages.
I'm sorry, but I will continue because we need very, we are very thankful, it's true, we are very thankful, but we can't save only by say thank you, can't save our lives.
That's why I'm very honest for us, it's very important to have a date for our membership.
Otherwise, after this war will end, I'm sure that it will end, Putin will do everything.
Doesn't matter what he will negotiate, he will do everything by his hands or by hands of some not big countries, but very ambitious leaders.
He will do everything by using them to block our EU membership.
That's why I want very much to have signing by Americans, Russians, Europeans, and Ukrainians in this 20-points plan where the date is written.
I think this is very important for our nation.
And of course, we will, all these months, first of all, we will strengthen our soldiers and we'll do our best for our civilians.
What can I say?
The unity is very important, and the United States is important.
They have only to make Ukraine stronger than Russia.
Thank you.
unidentified
On that note, Mr. President, Secretary General, President of the Parliament, Senator Rika, thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll continue momentarily in the main conference hall.
Please remain seated.
Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated in the main conference hall.
Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski was part of a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference, highlighting U.S.-Denmark relations and Trump administration efforts to acquire Greenland, a territory of Denmark.
Senator Murkowski also weighs in on potential threats from Russia and China.