Anne Applebaum, Jeffrey Goldberg
Apr 15, 2022
In a wide-ranging conversation at his compound in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tells The Atlantic what Ukraine needs to survive—and describes the price it has paid.
It’s not that the various presidents and prime ministers who profess sympathy for the Ukrainian cause don’t want to help, Zelensky said: “They are not against us. They just live in a different situation. As long as they have not lost their parents and children, they do not feel the way we feel.” He makes the comparison to the conversations he has with the extraordinary defenders of Mariupol, the besieged port city where 21,000 civilians may have been killed so far. “For example, they say, ‘We need help; we have four hours.’ And even in Kyiv we don’t understand what four hours are. In Washington for sure they can’t understand. However, we are grateful to the U.S., because the planes with weapons are still coming.”
Later that night, one of Zelensky’s advisers texted us with a list of what, exactly, Ukraine needs to repel the invasion from the east:
Artillery, 155 millimeters Artillery shells, 152 millimeters as many as possible Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (“Grad”, “Smerch”, “Tornado” or M142 HIMARS) Armored vehicles (armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, others) Tanks (T-72 tanks or similar tanks from the USA or Germany) Air defense systems (S-300, “BUK” or western equivalents) Military aircraft—MUST HAVE—to deblock our cities and save millions of Ukrainians as well as millions of Europeans)
