Zelenskyy: Our partners must understand that providing us with air defense is about defense, not about attacking Russia
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine needs to put pressure on its partners to give it air defense and, accordingly, the opportunity to defend itself from missile and bomb attacks by the Russian Federation; partners should also understand that the provided air defense means for Ukraine will be its defense against Russia, and not an attack on the territory of the Russian Federation.
"The most important problem that exists today is the use by Russia of more than 3,000 guided aerial bombs. Simply at people. A month," he said at a press conference with the Spanish Prime Minister in Madrid.
At the same time, as Zelenskyy noted, "we believe that next month there may be 3,500 Russian bombs being dropped."
"Thousands of bombs are flying right on people's heads. With any training, a person, no matter what kind of protection he has, is not able to withstand it. People can't stand it. How to deal with it? There are not enough air defense missiles to fight this," he stressed.
Zelenskyy recalled that Ukraine is constantly asking the world to help at least with additional Patriot systems. "At least seven systems. Because we need at least two systems only for Kharkiv, for this direction. What for? Russia uses these bombs from its aircraft. And if we have modern Patriot systems, these planes will not be able to fly so close to use these bombs simply on the civilian population and on our military. This is an obvious fact. I'm not talking about dozens of systems in order to completely close the sky over Ukraine. I'm talking about at least not giving Russia the opportunity to use thousands of bombs. That's what we're talking about."
The Head of State also said that he had raised with the Spanish Prime Minister the issue of the transfer of air defense, however, according to him, Spain alone cannot close this issue.
"And that's why we need to work together and put pressure. And not only on Russia anymore. We need to put pressure on our partners to give us the opportunity to defend ourselves from the Russian Federation. Even those partners who are afraid to give us weapons should understand that ‘Air Defense’ is a defense, not an offensive. This is protection. And this is the only way for us," he concluded.
