Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the UN General Assembly, New York, September 25, 2024

Wednesday’s Coverage: Zelenskiy to UN Security Council — “Force Russia Into Peace”

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1112 GMT:

As expected (see 0716 GMT), US President Joe Biden has confirmed almost $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

“Today, I am announcing a surge in security assistance for Ukraine and a series of additional actions to help Ukraine win this war,” Biden said in a statement.

He did not refer to Ukraine’s appeal for the US to lift a ban on Kyiv’s use of long-range missiles inside Russia.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy responded:

UPDATE 1110 GMT:

The UK has imposed sanctions on five more Russian ships and two shipping entities.

Earlier this month London sanctioned 10 ships in Russia’s “shadow fleet” circumventing Western restrictions on purchases and imports of Russian oil.

UPDATE 1104 GMT:

Ukraine Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga and Presidential Chief of Staff Andrii Yermak have met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The discussion came a day after Wang met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (see 0618 GMT).

The Ukraine Foreign Minister said Sybiga and Yermak “thanked China for supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. The Foreign Minister said the meeting “exchanged views on the principles of achieving a comprehensive, fair and lasting peace for Ukraine based on the UN Charter”, “focused on next steps to develop bilateral relations and trade”, and “discussed plans for further contacts at the highest level”.

UPDATE 0916 GMT:

Three staff of the Ukrainian Red Cross were injured in Russian shelling of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday.

A Red Cross term were on a humanitarian mission when the shells exploded outside a residential building.

UPDATE 0731 GMT:

Air defenses have downed around 10 of 15 Iran-type attack drones fired by Russia overnight on Kyiv.

Across 14 regions, defenses intercepted four Kh-59/69 guided air missiles and 66 of 78 attack UAVs.

In the capital, debris from a downed drone damaged a gas pipe in a five-story residential building and around 20 cars.

No casualties were reported, after the air raid alarm sounded for five hours in Ukraine’s capital.

However, a 62-year-old woman was killed in Russian drone and missile strikes on the Odesa region in southern Ukraine. Eight people were wounded in a guided bomb attack on Zaporizhzhia city.

Russia launched at least four Kinzhal hypersonic missiles: one towards the western part of Ukraine and one on each of the Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, and Starokostiantyniv regions.

Parts of Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine are left without power after a strike on critical infrastructure, and there are outages in the Poltava region in central Ukraine and the Chernihiv region in the north.

UPDATE 0716 GMT:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $375 million in military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday.

The package includes HIMARS precision rocket launchers, cluster munitions, and light tactical vehicles.

Blinken said in a statement, “The United States is committed to Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s brutal aggression….[We will] deploy this new assistance as quickly as possible.”

Two US officials said Washington will announce more than $8 billion in aid when Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits President Joe Biden in the White House on Thursday.

A second announcement will be of $2.4 billion under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative program, allowing the Biden Administration to buy weapons for Ukraine from companies rather than pulling them from US stocks.

That aid will include munitions, weapons to combat drones, and material to support munitions production in Ukraine, one official said.

UPDATE 0649 GMT:

Donald Trump has pulled out of a possible meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Trump’s aides confirmed the withdrawal. They gave no reason, but the shift follows a Zelenskiy interview in which he praised Trump but said Vice Presidential running mate J.D. Vance was “too radical”.

Trump, who blackmailed the Zelenskiy Government in 2019 by freezing military aid amid Russia’s “hybrid war”, supported the Kremlin’s lines at a campaign rally in Georgia on Tuesday. He sneered at Zelenskiy as a the “greatest salesman on earth”, lying that “every time Zelenskiy comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion”.

He assailed the Ukrainian President for not capitulating before Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022.

The worst deal would’ve been better than what we have now. What deal can we make? It’s demolished….The people are dead. The country is in rubble.

Last Sunday in North Carolina, Trump ranted:

The President of Ukraine is in our country. He is making little nasty aspersions toward your favourite president, me. We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelenskiy.

Vance has called for an end to all US support for Kyiv’s resistance. Last week he said “peace” could be assured by allowing Russia to retain the Ukrainian territory it had seized, establishing a demilitarized zone and banning Kyiv from joining NATO and other Western organizations.

In the interview with the New Yorker, Zelenskyy said he had spoken with Trump by telephone: “His message was as positive as it could be, from my point of view — ‘I understand,’ ‘I will lend support,’ and so on.”

He said of Vance:

His message seems to be that Ukraine must make a sacrifice. This brings us back to the question of the cost and who shoulders it. The idea that the world should end this war at Ukraine’s expense is unacceptable.

Reworking Trump’s Presidential debate gaffe of “a concept of a plan”, Zelenskiy said, “I do not consider this concept of his a plan, in any formal sense. It’s just sloganeering.”

Propping up Trump and Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson demanded the dismissal of Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, over the President’s visit to a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania on Sunday.

Johnson snapped that Markarova organized the visit, where Zelenskiy praised the plant’s workers for helping Ukraine, as a “partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats”.

UPDATE 0618 GMT:

As Ukraine’s allies criticized China’s essential support of Russia’s invasion, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.

There was no reference to the claims of Beijing’s military or technological assistance for Moscow. Instead, the Russian Foreign Ministry said:

A thorough exchange of views was held on global and Eurasian security, including the Ukrainian crisis, measures to counter the West’s escalation in the Asia-Pacific Region and around Taiwan, as well as on a number of other regional issues.

The Ministry proclaimed that the meeting was held “in a traditionally trusting and constructive manner, characteristic of Russian-Chinese strategic partnership”.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Russia has established a program in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in Ukraine.

“Two sources from a European intelligence agency” and documents set out how IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian State-owned weapons company Almaz-Antey, developed and flight-tested the new drone model Garpiya-3 with the help of local specialists in China.

Kupol told the Russian Defense Ministry that it could produce drones including the G3 at scale at a factory in China for the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

A US National Security Council spokesperson expressed concern, but said Washington does not have intelligence so far that Chinese authorities were aware of the transactions or that the government is involved in providing lethal assistance to Russia.

The spokesperson added that the government has “a responsibility to ensure its companies are not providing lethal assistance”, as the reports “are further evidence that the PRC government’s efforts are clearly not meeting the mark”.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, seeking “real peace and just peace” in the face of Russia’s 31-month invasion.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin — unsettled by the prospect of long-range Ukrainian strikes inside Russia — spoke about the use of nuclear weapons.

Zelenskiy told the Assembly:

I want peace for my people, real peace and just peace, and I am asking for your support from all nations of the world. We do not divide the world. I ask the same of you. Do not divide the world. Be united, nations, and that will bring us peace.

Noting how Ukrainian children are “learning to distinguish the sounds of different types of artillery and drone” and civilians are forcefully separated because Putin “decided he could do whatever he wants”, Zelenskiy said every world leader who support Ukraine understands how Russia wants more territory — “which is insane…while wanting to destroy its neighbor”.

He described how Putin is trying to “break the Ukrainian spirit”, for example, through attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid.

Russia has destroyed all our thermal power plants and a large part of our hydroelectric capacity. This is how Putin is preparing for winter, hoping to torment millions of Ukrainians … Putin wants to leave them in the dark and [force] Ukraine to suffer and surrender.

To illustrate the threat, Zelenskiy described the storming of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the opening days of the invasion in February 2022, with the Russian army operating “brutally” and without thought of consequences in “one of the most horrifying moments of the war”.

“Most in the world understand what’s at stake,” Zelenskiy said. “A day like that must never come….These are nuclear power plants. They must be safe.”

He added, “If God forbid, Russia causes a nuclear disaster at one of our nuclear power plants, radiation will not respect state borders.”

With Russia blockading the Security Council, the President urged support for the 10-point Ukraine Peace Formula to end the invasion.

When the aggressor exercises veto power, the UN is powerless to stop the war. But the Peace Formula…there is no veto power in it. That’s why it’s the best opportunity for peace.

Putin’s Threat

Putin illustrated the gravity of Zelenskiy’s description during a meeting of Russia’s State Security Council.

In televised remarks, he told the officials that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons if the Kremlin received “reliable information” about the start of a massive launch of missiles, warplanes, or drones.

He warned that a nuclear power supporting the attack on Russia would be considered a participant in aggression.

We see the modern military and political situation is dynamically changing and we must take this into consideration. Including the emergence of new sources of military threats and risks for Russia and our allies.

The threat was a blunt attempt to reinforce US hesitancy in allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied missiles for strikes inside Russia.

Two weeks ago, after months of prohibiting the attacks, the Biden Administration appeared to be on the verge of approving Kyiv’s deployment of UK-made Storm Shadow missiles.

But confirmation never made, and recent statements by US officials to the media indicate the Administration is still not making any decision.

On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer remained non-committal: “We will have discussions about a whole range of issues, and we will listen carefully to what President Zelenskiy’s got to say, and that’s what’s going to happen in the next few days.”

Discussions would not be about the “sole issue like long-range missiles” but a “strategic, overarching route for Ukraine to find a way through this and succeed against Russian aggression”, Starmer said.

See also Ukraine War, Day 935: “Intense Consultations” on Long-Range Strikes Inside Russia

Ukraine’s Presidential Chief of Staff Andrii Yermak responded to Putin, “Russia no longer has any instruments to intimidate the world apart from nuclear blackmail. These instruments will not work.”