What to expect from Zelensky's UN addresspublished at 21:12 British Summer Time 21 September 2022published at 20:12 21 September 2022
Hugo Bachega
Reporting from Kyiv
The nearly seven-month war in Ukraine has dominated the UN General Assembly, on a day when the Russian president announced a partial military mobilisation to support his war.
Hours earlier, President Biden delivered a strongly worded statement, slamming President Putin for starting a “brutal, needless” conflict, saying it shamelessly violated the main principles of the UN charter.
Russia, Biden said, was trying to extinguish “Ukraine’s right to exist as a state” and had to be held accountable for any war crimes found to have been committed in the country.
The US is Ukraine’s biggest supporter, and Biden has vowed to keep helping the Ukrainians for as long as it takes.
Next, it’s the Ukrainian president’s turn to speak. What can we expect?
President Zelensky is likely to thank countries for their help - military, financial and humanitarian - but say the Ukrainians need more to recapture territory.
Putin’s announcement and plans by Russian-backed officials to hold referendums on joining Russia in occupied regions of Ukraine, widely condemned in the West, have escalated tensions in the conflict.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Zelensky, told me earlier: “We understand what resources we need.
"We understand that, today, it will be easier to talk with our partners in terms of accelerating the provision of weapons.”