Zelensky Makes Emotional Appeal to Congress

CLAY: Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Congress just a couple of hours ago and made his plea for as much American support as he could possibly get as the overall battle inside of Ukraine continues to grow in intensity. He spoke in English for a short part of that overall address. Here is Volodymyr Zelensky speaking in English.

ZELENSKY: As the leader of my nation, I’m addressing President Biden. You are the leader of the nation of your great nation. I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace. Thank you.

CLAY: So, there’s no doubt now, Buck, that Zelensky is continuing to play the role — we talked about this last week — of the modern-day Churchill. He is going around and speaking to all these different countries. He just spoke to Canada. I believe he’s scheduled to speak to several other European countries. He’s already spoken last week to Boris Johnson Parliament in England. He spoke to Congress asking for as much support as he can possibly get. I don’t doubt that this will help his overall trajectory in terms of the amount of support the United States is going to give him; but do you believe anything changed in any kind of substantive way based on his address to Congress today, Buck?

BUCK: Emotional appeal, that’s what it was, in front of the members of Congress assembled. There was a video — it was scored with, sad orchestral music, and they were showing horrific imagery of children missing legs and buildings being destroyed and this is all meant — this is all happening, and it is horrible, it is atrocious. This is meant to evoke an emotional response from us that we should think differently about what the U.S. role in this should be based upon the emotional appeal, right, based upon our sense of outraged morality. And I think we have to be very cautious about that.

We all understand what’s going on here is terrible. The whole war should have been averted. I think that’s something that gets lost in this discussion. It was an enormous blunder and a miscalculation on the part of the NATO allies looking at this, the Biden administration looking at this. They really didn’t believe, I think, until the very end, until maybe the days or couple of weeks before that Putin was gonna go in. But put that aside for a moment.

Clay, there’s already negotiations underway — this being widely reported on — about how to end the conflict, what would be necessary here in terms of concessions from Ukraine. Now, I understand that we want to side with and we do side with the aggrieved, assaulted party here, which is Ukraine. They’re being bullied, and they’re being massacred by a superior military force and a bigger, stronger country in a way that is horrific.
But all of that said, the most important thing, I believe, is to bring this war to a conclusion, and there’s already a discussion about neutrality for Ukraine, would that be enough.

Now, Ukraine, as I understand the negotiations — of course I’m not there — we have to rely on the reporting on this, right? You’re not in the room, I’m not in the room, but this is what Western news sources are reporting. Ukraine is saying no, we have to have guarantees, security guarantees and not just a promise of neutrality. But there’s already discussion about how to end this thing. Keep that in mind when we’re looking at now the ask from Zelensky — there’s two things. He wants a no-fly zone, clear the skies, which we’ve already discussed; the no-fly zone means shooting down Russian planes.

CLAY: And it’s not seen, for everybody out there, that a no-fly zone is going to have the support in order to ever occur, at least with United States involvement or NATO involvement, right? It does not seem that that’s gonna happen.

BUCK: Today, yes. I’m not sure ever, but I think today — that’s my concern. I mean, Clay, you’re right that right now, there is really a bipartisan agreement that we don’t — there is a bipartisan leadership consensus, but it has — this has been evolving day in and day out. The secondary ask was, well, if you won’t do that, give us more weapons. And now there’s discussion of sending the switchblade suicide drones, for example. I mean, it’s a suicide for the drone, not a person. But that those were used in Afghanistan, for example, and giving them more advanced surface-to-air missile systems so they could at least defend themselves better against these Russian strikes. Keep in mind a lot of what we’re seeing are Russian missile strikes, what we understand, and artillery. And a no-fly zone would be very limited. In the way you stop that with a no-fly zone, Clay, would be engaging targets on the ground, which means now our planes are blowing up things on the ground too.

So this is how it gets much bigger, much faster as a point of U.S. military involvement. Will we give him additional tools? Yes, we’ve been giving them a lot. But I think the focus should be on trying to figure out what the negotiation could be here, what the final deal could be to end this, more so than this idea that Ukraine is gonna be able to — I still think you will think Ukraine is gonna be able to defeat Russia in this fight and kick them out of the country, and I don’t see that happening, and I don’t think anyone who’s following it very closely as a conflict sees that happen.

CLAY: And then you can certainly understand the Ukrainian perspective, which is if we’re going to enter into some form of ceasefire, how do we have guarantees that we’re not going to get invaded again by Russia in a year or six months or two years? What is there that would make Vladimir Putin not actually do this?

And look. They’ve already negotiated, they thought, for their own support historically. They gave up their nukes, they thought they were going to get the protection in the event that Russia ever invaded. And that’s the key, to me, is how in the world do you get an enforceable pact of nonaggression going forward from Russia? And can you trust anything that Vladimir Putin says in this arena? I don’t think you can, Buck. And so that raises the issue of, how do you ever end this conflict when there is no mutuality of trust that Vladimir Putin is going to accede to anything he agrees to today or tomorrow or in the near future for months or years into the future? It’s just not gonna happen. We can’t trust them.

BUCK: There’s two parts of this, right? There’s the stopping the missiles and the bombs from falling right now to save as many lives as possible while we can; and I think what you’re getting to, Clay, is the reality of what things actually look like even after a ceasefire. Right now, I think there’s essentially no chance that you’re gonna have Russia agree to give back any of the territory. Forget about Crimea. That’s been officially part of Russia even though the international community rejects it, it’s been officially part of Russia for years. But everything that they’ve grabbed in the east, maybe even some of the stuff they’ve grabbed to the north much Kiev, the capital city, they may say, well, no, this is now a Russian protectorate. We need this for a strategic buffer, if you will, between a hostile state and us. And so what’s the difference between that and a forward operating base for further aggression against Ukraine in two years, in 10 years — who knows? — to take more of the country as a stronger, more powerful neighbor?

So is that likely to happen? I think so. I think that that’s one of the big challenges here is. Even if there is a ceasefire and a promise of neutrality, it feels like this is just a phased consuming of the Ukrainian state by the Russian bear that is happening right now. It’s just a question of how much they do today, how much they’ll do in six months and in six years. But it all also comes back to, do we want to have a fight with Russia? Does the United States, do our NATO allies want to see how crazy Putin’s willing to be if he feels backed into a corner? And I think the answer is still, for those who understand what he could pull off and what he could try, this is not our fight, our troops should not be involved, our airmen and women should not be involved. Clay, that could change very quickly. Enough of these videos and enough these appeals.

CLAY: Not only that, I mean, what in the world going forward is going to happen in terms of bringing Russia back into the global order. Again, the analogy that I would use historically, Buck, is, this feels a bit to me like the first Gulf War, where Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, the United Nations, everybody comes together to kick him out of Kuwait, but he’s still in control. And so it’s just part and parcel of a longer story as opposed to some sort of official resolution.

Obviously, the difference is Russia is gaining territory here whereas Iraq lost all of its territory. But Saddam Hussein remained in power and we ended up having a second part to that, which was second Gulf War. I don’t know that we’re going to get any sort of substantive resolution here because Putin, it appears, is going to remain in power, and how can you trust anything that he’s going to do after what we’ve seen over the last three weeks or so?

BUCK: And it does feel like we’re entering a new Cold War that’s really a two-front Cold War.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We have Russia to deal with in the west, although of course Russia also stretches to the east, but Russia to deal with in the west and China to deal with in the east. China more economically at least right now, Russia more militarily, but the old Soviet Union may be gone, we’ve got some pretty massive challenges in geopolitics going forward in the West. It’s not gonna be the clear sailing many of us had hoped for, unfortunately.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

SEN. KELLY: The first thing we would have to do is suppress the enemy air defenses; so we’d have to take out the Russian surface-to-air missile sites. And then as Russian airplanes are flying, you have to enforce the no-fly zone; so you have to shoot ’em down. And we can do that. But then we’re in a direct combat action with the Russian military. That means we are at war with Russia. And at this point I think it is in the best interests of everybody for us to avoid being at war with Russia. Russia has 6,000 nuclear warheads. We have 5,500. The support we’re giving Ukraine is effective.

BUCK: Welcome back to Clay and Buck. That was Senator Mark Kelly on the no-fly zone. Yeah, it is best if we avoid a war with Russia. I think that is pretty clear. Let’s be very clear-eyed about this one. What is the worst possible outcome? I think that’s the worst possible outcome of all of the things that we are seeing; so we should do everything we can to avoid that. So then what other options are there?

Well, congressional minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, says that we need to give Ukraine a mix of stuff so they can create their own no-fly zone.

HOUSE MINORITY LEADER MCCARTHY: Thought President Zelensky was very powerful, many of you watched, made the case very strongly. You think about what President Biden should do, I think there’s a bipartisan movement right here, provide them the MiGs, provide them the planes where they can create a no-fly zone, provide them the armaments that they need to continue to fight a war that they did not create. I thought the video was one of the most moving moments and made cases of the murdering of innocent people, that war crimes are being committed, that America and world cannot sit by and ignore.

BUCK: Clay, this is where we may see a change in sentiment. A few days ago it was giving planes could be seen as an escalation. And people argue, well, we’re already giving them shoulder-fired missiles and what’s the difference. Well, it’s like f you were to give your neighbor a rifle to fight off a home invasion versus I guess giving them a bazooka, I mean, there are different levels of military assistance and involvement that one could point to. To be fair, it’s lethal aid either way; so I see this. Do you think we’re gonna give them planes?

CLAY: It seems like there is a building consensus towards giving them the planes. I mean, when I watched the Zelensky discussion, Buck, what immediately comes to mind — remember early on when he said this may be the last time that you see me alive, and there was this idea that Russia was going to capture and assassinate Zelensky?

BUCK: Yep.

CLAY: That seems to have completely disappeared, the idea that he’s going to be captured and assassinated, such that you know the technology and the search capabilities better than most, but when you’re addressing Congress and you’re talking to world leaders all over the place, there has to be a degree of confidence that somebody’s not suddenly going to bomb where you are or there’s not going to be an assassin squad that suddenly shows up while you’re in the middle of an event like this.

He hasn’t left Kiev, to our knowledge, and so I wonder to what extent there is some sort of agreement — tell me if you think I’m crazy on this — that his safety is not now as paramount of a concern as it appeared to be in the first few days of this invasion. Does that make sense? I mean, when I see him doing all these — all these interviews and all these discussions everywhere, it doesn’t seem to me like he is terrified that at any moment he’s going to be killed.

BUCK: You’re hearing less about it, to be sure, and there is a lot of what really felt bike war propaganda coming from all directions in the early days of the conflict. I’d say this, though. What really has to be assessed here is enhancing the capabilities of the Ukrainians to punch back against the Russians, specifically with planes, does that prolong or shorten the conflict so that we get to a negotiation and an end to actual hostilities? I think there’s an assumption that it would make the Russians come to the table faster. We’ll have to see.