Zelensky’s words on U.S. visit laid out why Ukraine’s fight is ours

As I watched Volodymyr Zelensky take the podium Thursday night at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., I was surprised the Ukrainian president could still stand.

He had just completed a grueling three days urging the U.N. General Assembly, President Joe Biden, Congress, and the Pentagon to keep supporting his country. His second trip to the United States was very different from the first, back in December 2022, when Ukraine had just scored a partial route of Russian troops. Then, Zelensky was greeted as another Winston Churchill.

This time, he had faced a half-empty hall during his first in-person address to the U.N. General Assembly — the result of Russian alliances with dictatorships and wooing of some developing countries. Moreover, on this trip, GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rudely refused to permit Zelensky to address a joint session of Congress. Meantime, Donald Trump has made clear his readiness to sell out Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, as U.S. support for Ukraine diminishes.

Yet despite the gloom — and his obvious fatigue — this Zelensky visit was even more important to Americans than his first trip. Ukraine’s counteroffensive to push out the Russian invaders is at a crossroads. It’s doing better than most Americans realize, yet doomed to fail without continued strong U.S. and European assistance.

» READ MORE: Russia’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children under the spotlight at United Nations | Trudy Rubin

It’s worth paying attention to Zelensky’s key points that lay out the global implications of a Ukrainian defeat. As Zelensky told Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), “If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war.” So will the United States and our democratic allies.

At the National Archives building, Zelensky addressed an auditorium crowded with prominent Ukrainian Americans, congressional supporters, and volunteer organizations and doctors who are helping Ukraine — all of whom he thanked profusely. The atmosphere was ecstatic, which probably helped keep him going.

The symbolism of the setting couldn’t have been more deliberate or more apt.

The Ukrainian leader and his elegant wife stood under a mural depicting Thomas Jefferson, surrounded by many of the Founding Fathers, as he hands a copy of the Declaration of Independence to John Hancock. The clear message: Ukrainians will fight to the end, not because they are proxies for NATO, but because they refuse to permit an imperialist Russia to destroy their independence. Just as the Founding Fathers resisted British attempts to squash America’s efforts.

Zelensky cited a document he’d been shown at the archives: a telegram from President Abraham Lincoln to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. “Hold on with a bulldog grip and chew and choke as much as possible,” it read. “These words that inspired Americans reflect exactly how Ukrainians fight,” Zelensky said.

I saw this “bulldog grip” myself on visits to the Ukrainian front line in July, where soldiers who have fought in the trenches for months push on. They know that if they lose, their democracy will be destroyed. (What a contrast with the cowardice of Speaker McCarthy and Republican House members, who are ready to shut down the entire U.S. government rather than confront a radical MAGA faction that disdains democracy — and Ukraine.)

But back to Zelensky’s prophetic words at the United Nations.

As Putin blusters about nukes to scare the West, the Russian leader is “weaponizing many other things [that] are used not only against our country but against all of yours as well,” Zelensky said.

Food has been weaponized against Africa and Asia as Russia has withdrawn from the U.N. grain initiative that allowed Kyiv to export its foodstuffs. Now Moscow blockades all Ukrainian ports while bombing grain silos and harbors.

Energy has been weaponized, as Russia plays ugly games by mining and shooting at the massive Ukrainian nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia that it occupies. Ecology has been weaponized, as Russia blows up a major dam and destroys farmland and livestock. Children have been weaponized, as Moscow has deported tens of thousands to occupied or internal Russian territory.

“When hatred is weaponized against one nation, it never stops there,” Zelensky said. Putin’s asymmetric warfare is already threatening not just nearby non-NATO members such as Moldova and Georgia, but also NATO members like the Baltic states, Poland, and Finland.

Western European states already experience Russian monetary and cyber meddling in their internal politics, or military testing in their offshore waters and in the Arctic.

In other words, as Zelensky warned, “The aggressor scatters death and brings ruins even without nukes” and “must be restrained.” And Ukraine is the test case.

If the United States and its allies are willing to let Russia keep most of its territorial spoils — which will destroy Ukraine as a democratic, viable state — Russia will inevitably regroup and threaten Western countries. It will believe the West hasn’t the will to stop Putin.

As Zelensky bluntly told the U.N. Security Council, Russia’s targets can expect no help from that body, as now constituted. That’s because a war-criminal state holds a veto on the council.

“Ukrainian soldiers are currently doing, at the expense of their blood, what the U.N. Security Council should do by its voting,” Zelensky told council members. Those troops “are stopping aggression and upholding the principles of the U.N. Charter.”

Which brings me to Zelensky’s meeting with President Biden.

» READ MORE: Why Ukraine’s fight is America’s fight | Trudy Rubin

All praise to Biden for not only pouring U.S. weapons into Ukraine but for rallying NATO allies whose monetary contributions to the war effort now equal ours. And Biden reportedly told Zelensky he will provide a variant of the advanced long-range missile ATACMS that Ukraine has sought for months.

But there is a critical element missing in U.S. support for Kyiv. Zelensky knows Ukraine needs to put Putin’s military on its back before any negotiations are possible. Biden still seems wary of going that far — which sets Kyiv on a path to failure.

The ATACMS variant being sent is shorter range and less powerful than what Ukraine needs to cripple the Russian presence in Crimea. And the White House has failed to educate the American public on the real advances Ukraine has made, or why the war matters so much to us. That outreach is vital in order to boost public support for aid.

Zelensky laid out the brutal consequences to Ukraine, the United States, and the world of a failure to defeat the aggressor.

Ukrainian troops will continue to die holding back Russia until Biden decides if he really wants Ukraine to win this war.