Parliament member Oleksandra Ustinova called President Biden’s State of the Union speech “a total disappointment” and called for a no-fly zone to protect the Ukrainian people.
A member of Ukraine’s parliament called President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech “a total disappointment” on TODAY Wednesday, as she called for a no-fly zone to protect her country from Russian airstrikes.
Oleksandra Ustinova expressed frustration with Biden and the international community for not offering more protection to Ukraine, specifically against Russia’s military aircraft. She said “the whole of Ukraine” was watching Biden’s speech on Tuesday night.
“To be honest, it was a total disappointment for us,” she told Savannah Guthrie. “I can explain why. Today, the whole world is watching Ukrainians being executed. I cannot name it the other way around.
“The right definition is an execution because we see bombs going into our civilian houses every day, we see children dying every day on the streets or in their houses if they didn’t make it to the bomb shelter, we see bombs coming to the orphanages, to the schools. And we had been promised a protection by the international community. We gave up our nuclear weapons.”
Ukraine once possessed the world’s third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
However, the sovereign nation signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 in which Russia, Britain and the U.S. committed to refrain from attacking Ukraine in exchange for the country turning over its nuclear arsenal to Russia to be dismantled.
On TODAY Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated Biden’s State of the Union comments that the U.S. will not send troops to Ukraine to fight against Russia. Biden said the U.S. will “defend every inch” of NATO territory, but that does not include Ukraine because it is not a member of NATO.
“And today when I see President Biden saying that we’re going to protect every inch of the NATO territory, excuse me, we’ve been promised the same thing when we gave up our nuclear weapons,” Ustinova said. “The Russians have totally destroyed all of the airports in Ukraine, the majority of the roads. We are grateful for help, but we need protection in our sky.”
