Olena Zelenskaya, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, appeared on British media Saturday to admonish Americans against growing “tired” of sending military aid.
“We really need the help,” the Ukrainian First Lady said in an interview with the BBC taped on Thursday. “In simple words, we cannot get tired of this situation, because if we do, we die.”
The interview was aired the day after the US Congress shot down $60 billion worth of military aid to the country. The United States has so far sent $113 billion in funding to Ukraine since February 2022.
26 November 2023, 16:19 GMT
Ukraine has been in crisis since 2014’s “Euromaidan” coup forced elected President Victor Yanukovich out of the country. Extremist elements have increasingly gained prominence in Ukraine since then, with the Atlantic Council admitting, “Ukraine’s got a real problem with far-right violence.”
“It sounds like the stuff of Kremlin propaganda, but it’s not,” an article by the pro-NATO think tank candidly admitted in 2018. “Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote ‘national patriotic education projects’ in the country.”
Violence in the country intensified in the following years, frequently targeting dissidents and ethnic Russian groups in the country’s eastern departments. In early 2022, Russia launched a special military operation to restore order in the Donbass region and protect Russian population in the territory.