President Zelensky: terrorist Russia has "no right to hold nuclear weapons"

In his speech before the U.N. General Assembly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky targeted Russia’s possession of nuclear weapons.

“Ukraine gave up its third largest nuclear arsenal. The world then decided Russia should become a keeper of such power. Yet history shows it was Russia who deserved nuclear disarmament the most, back in the 1990s. And Russia deserves it now. Terrorists have no right to hold nuclear weapons.”

Zelensky was referring to the Budapest Memorandum, which denuclearized Ukraine when Bill Clinton was U.S. president. Ukraine at the time held the world’s third-largest store of nukes. Thousands of nuclear warheads were transported from Ukraine to Russia as a result of the treaty.

Later, in 2010, Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych agreed to send highly enriched uranium to Russia. The disgraced Yanuvoych eventually fled to Russia, where he presumably lives today. The pro-Russia president had been elected in Ukraine with the expertise of his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, an American political consultant and associate of Roger Stone. Donald Trump hired Manafort in 2016 to serve as campaign chairman and to run the RNC convention. The Mueller Report discovered Manafort had ties to Russia, and found that he failed to register as a foreign agent. He was convicted in 2018 of tax fraud and witness tampering, but he received a pardon from Trump in 2020.

Prior to his speech before the U.N., Zelensky sat down with 60 Minutes, and called Vladimir Putin a “second Hitler.”

Asked by Scott Pelley why Putin had yet to use nuclear weapons, Zelensky replied, “I think he’s going to continue threatening. He’s waiting for the United States to become less stable. He thinks that’s going to happen during the U.S. election.”

Several Republican candidates for president have been lukewarm to hostile toward Ukraine, such as Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Donald Trump, who has a history of praising Putin. Early last year, Trump applauded Putin’s aggression: “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine—of Ukraine—Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.” (Donald Trump, The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, February 22, 2022)

More recently, Putin lauded Trump for saying he would bring about a “deal” to quickly end the war. Putin said, “Mr. Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis. We cannot help but feel happy about it.” Trump responded, “I like that he said that. Because that means what I’m saying is right.”

Zelensky told Pelley he has an obligation to never surrender.

“A week ago, I gave awards to parents of soldiers who have been killed,” said Zelensky. “What should I tell them? That all of them died so that we could say ‘it’s okay, Russia, you can take it all’? It’s a difficult job—you understand me, right?—giving awards to people whose faces show their whole world has collapsed. All I can give them is victory.”

“We are defending the values of the whole world,” Zelensky said. “These are Ukrainian people who are paying the highest price. We are truly fighting for our freedom. We are dying. We’re not fiction. We’re not a book. We are fighting for real, with a nuclear state that threatens to destroy the world.”