Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Denmark for standing with Ukraine in a speech at the Danish Folketing, in excerpts he posted on X.
Zelenskyy said he gets that same feeling whenever he talks to Mette, and whenever he talks to Danes. It comes, he told lawmakers, from intentions that are truly good, and from a simple piece of wisdom Danes live by: “treat others the way you would want to be treated.”
Danes have a word for that: “samfundssind.” By his explanation, it means people carry a responsibility not only toward themselves, but toward other people as well. To do that in today’s world, he said, is priceless.
“Thank you for being Denmark – a country that acts with heart, and confidence, a country that we in Ukraine – and everyone in Europe – can always count on.”
Patriot missiles going to the Middle East
But then Zelenskyy took a harder tone. Will Washington bomb Iran once again? Ukraine thinks about this question all the time, Zelenskyy said, and not only because of the consequences that may arise in that region.
But a bombing there will come home to Ukraine as well. It will come in prices. And it will come in weapons Ukraine needs for its defense, weapons already in short supply. “We can already feel these shortages.”
It is on Patriot missiles that the search keeps stalling. Ukraine needs them to protect its cities and communities from Russian ballistic missiles, but the missiles, Zelenskyy said, go to the Middle East. “And what do we have? Empty Patriot systems and Russian ballistic missiles that, in most cases, we have nothing to shoot down with.”
“In our world, nothing stays local – especially wars and injustice.”
Russia and security guarantees
He saved his strongest words for Moscow, and for the talk that Russia supposedly needs security guarantees of its own. Nobody has attacked Russia for decades, Zelenskyy noted.
Look back to the end of the Second World War. There is not a single decade that passed after that, he said, without Russia starting a war or using its military forces against another country.
When Russians talk about a security architecture for themselves, or security guarantees for Russia, real security is not what they are talking about, in his view. Neither is peace.
Left to themselves, Russians would interfere where they pleased and use force at will, he said, and they would keep anyone from supporting liberty inside Russia itself. Behind it, Zelenskyy said, stands Russian President Vladimir Putin and a wish to keep personal power for life — and to “pass on his imperialist and, in many ways, simply fascist views to the next generations.”