Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday, while virtually addressing Canada's Parliament, once again appealed for a no-fly zone over Ukraine and expressed gratitude to Ottawa for support at this time of crisis.
"Can you imagine when you called your friends, your friendly nation, and you ask, 'Please close the sky, close the airspace, please stop the bombing.' How many more missiles have to fall on our cities until you make this happen? And they ... express their deep concerns about the situation. When we talked with our partners, they said, 'Please, hold on, hold on a little longer,'" he said.
"I know you support Ukraine. We've been friends with you ... but also I would like you to understand and I would like you to feel this, what we feel every day. We want to live and we want to be victorious. We want to prevail for the sake of life," Zelensky added.
"You've offered your help, your assistance, at our earliest request, you supply us with the military assistance, with humanitarian assistance, you imposed severe sanctions, serious sanctions. At the same time, we see that unfortunately, they did not bring the end to the war," he said in the speech.
While giving an analogy, Zelenskky asked the Canadian lawmakers to imagine how they would personally react to an invasion of the country's own cities. Zelenskyy tells the parliament to image Ottawa airport bombed and Vancouver under siege."Can you only imagine that on 4:00 a.m., you start hearing bomb explosions, severe explosions? Can you imagine hearing you, your children, hear all of these severe explosions? Bombing of airport? Bombing of Ottawa airport? Tens of other cities of your wonderful country -- can you imagine that?" he said.
"Imagine someone is laying siege to Vancouver. Can you just imagine that for a second? All these people who are left in such city. That is exactly the situation that the city of Mariupol is suffering right now," he said. "And they are left without heat or hydro or without means of communicating, almost without food, without water."
He continued the analogy saying, "Can you imagine the famous CN Tower in Toronto, if it was hit by Russian bombs? Of course I don't wish this on anyone, but this is our reality in which we live."
Zelensky told the leaders by video link that 97 children have been killed in Ukraine so far. "Some companies say they have left, but they are just waiting for the moment they can return to the Russian market. They don't care about 97 children; up to now, 97 children have been killed here," Zelenskyy said.
Russia started a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 in response to calls from the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics for protection against intensifying attacks by Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the special operation is targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure only and the civilian population is not in danger. Moscow has repeatedly said it has no plans to occupy Ukraine. Western nations have imposed numerous sanctions on Russia.
( With inputs from ANI )
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