Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today channeled Winston Churchill as he delivered a historic address to the House of Commons.
Mr Zelensky was given a standing ovation by MP’s both before and after his speech in which he compared Ukraine’s fight against Russia to Britain’s World War Two struggle against Nazi Germany.
Drawing on Churchill’s iconic ‘we shall fight them on the beaches’ wartime address, he said Ukrainians will fight against Moscow’s forces on land, sea and in the air.
Mr Zelensky said: ‘We will not give up and we will not lose. We will fight to the end, at sea, in the air, we will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.
‘We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets.’ He said Ukraine is fighting a ‘war that we didn’t start and we didn’t want’ as he told MP’s ‘we do not want to lose what we have, what is ours’.
Comparing Ukraine to the UK in World War Two, Mr Zelensky said Ukrainians are fighting to save their country ‘just the same way as you once didn’t want to lose your country when Nazis started to fight your country and you had to fight for Britain’.
He also said more than 50 children have now been killed in the Russian invasion, telling the Commons: ‘These are the children that could have lived, but these people have taken them away from us.