Zelensky insists that the war in Ukraine must end and accuses Putin of wanting more territory

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has given one of the most anticipated speeches of the second day of the General Assembly. “This ridiculous war with Ukraine must end,” he said, before attacking the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. "Putin will fail, but he will make it clear to the world that our Donbas region is not enough for him, he wants more. He seems not to be able to say that enough is enough. Putin seeks to kill more people, more territory. Can you imagine Putin without war?" he said. For his part, the Argentine president, Javier Milei, resurrected the conflict over the Malvinas Islands this Wednesday at the UN General Assembly. “For us, they are a national cause,” the president stated during a tough speech with the UN and in which he defended the development of artificial intelligence without restrictions. The president of Iran, Masud Pezeshkian, responded during his speech to the threats of “annihilation” made by Donald Trump the previous day. He has accused the United States and Israel of the “brutal murder of civilians,” calling his country a “victim of terrorism.” “Our esteemed supreme leader was assassinated without any legal scheme or reason,” he said, warning Trump that “the resistance of the Iranian people will only increase in the face of sanctions, increased pressure and increasing intimidation.” “We are willing to dialogue, but without accepting the language of force,” he has claimed, and has vindicated his right to a nuclear program. On the outskirts of the summit, the heads of diplomacy of Russia and the United States, and the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, met with the mayor of New York, along with whom he has vindicated his progressive policies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky opened his speech to the UN General Assembly, as expected, with a clear diagnosis: “This ridiculous and endless war must end.”

The Ukrainian president claimed not to know any world leader who openly defends the continuity of the conflict, “except one man”: Vladimir Putin. According to figures he presented, between January and August of this year the Russian army lost 248,964 soldiers killed and seriously wounded on the front, a figure that, he said, exceeds the population of 21 countries. Zelensky claimed to have “confirmed video” of each of these casualties, describing an archive of drone recordings that document “killing zones” of Russian troops.

With these losses, he maintained, Russia managed to capture just over 1,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory this year—part of which, he said, had already been recovered—despite the fact that the country already has 17 million square kilometers of its own. “Putin is paying with 248 people for every kilometer,” he said, questioning whether anyone still considers him “reasonable and moderate.”

Zelensky also denounced the sending of North Korean troops to reinforce the Russian army, calling those losses part of the same “madness,” and warned that Kim Jong-un uses his soldiers “as a bargaining chip” in exchange for improvements in ballistic missile and drone capabilities that would already be visible to North Korea's neighbors in Asia.