Ukraine’s Zelenskiy Thanks EU for Help, Set to Press Leaders for Jets

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the European Parliament, during his second international trip since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Brussels, Belgium February 9, 2023. (Reuters)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the European Parliament, during his second international trip since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Brussels, Belgium February 9, 2023. (Reuters)
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Ukraine’s Zelenskiy Thanks EU for Help, Set to Press Leaders for Jets

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the European Parliament, during his second international trip since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Brussels, Belgium February 9, 2023. (Reuters)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses the European Parliament, during his second international trip since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Brussels, Belgium February 9, 2023. (Reuters)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked the European Union and its citizens on Thursday for the help Ukraine has been receiving to defend itself against the Russian invasion, before joining a summit of the bloc's leaders to ask for more weapons.

Having won promises of Western battle tanks in recent weeks, Ukrainian officials are now focused on trying to secure the supply of longer-range rockets and fighter jets.

But Zelenskiy did not mention Ukraine's demand for jets in his speech in the European Parliament, which seemed less aimed at pressing politicians than ensuring support from ordinary EU citizens suffering from steep inflation partly driven by the fallout from the war.

"Thank you," Zelenskiy said in a speech to EU lawmakers, who gave him a long standing ovation, cheering and applauding, some of them wearing the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag.

"I would like to thank you, all of you, who have been helping our people, our ordinary citizens, our resettled people here who called on their leaders to increase and enhance their support," he said, mentioning anyone from teachers and students to energy grid workers.

While Zelenskiy is unlikely to leave with immediate pledges to satisfy his request for jets, the visit gives him a chance, later in the day, to press his case in person with all the EU's 27 national leaders for the first time since Russia invaded his country on Feb. 24, 2022.

"We are defending ourselves in the battlefield, we Ukrainians, together with you," he said, adding that his country was fighting the "biggest anti-European force of the modern world".

Ukraine, which wants to join the EU, is also pushing for membership talks to start within months.

"A victorious Ukraine will be part of the European Union that will prevail," Zelenskiy said.

While some EU member countries are keen to give Ukraine the morale boost that would come with starting talks to join the bloc, others are much more cautious.

They have stressed would-be members need to meet a range of criteria - such as cracking down on corruption - before they can even start negotiations.



ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
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ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)

Judges at the International Criminal Court want Hungary to explain why it failed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Budapest earlier this month.

In a filing released late Wednesday, The Hague-based court initiated non-compliance proceedings against Hungary after the country gave Netanyahu a red carpet welcome despite an ICC arrest warrant for crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.

During the visit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced his country would quit the court, claiming on state radio that the ICC was “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”

The Hungarian leader, regarded by critics as an autocrat and the EU’s most intransigent spoiler in the bloc’s decision-making, defended his decision to not arrest Netanyahu.

“We signed an international treaty, but we never took all the steps that would otherwise have made it enforceable in Hungary,” Orbán said at the time, referring to the fact that Hungary’s parliament never promulgated the court’s statute into Hungarian law.

Judges at the ICC have previously dismissed similar arguments.

The ICC and other international organizations have criticized Hungary’s defiance of the warrant against Netanyahu. Days before his arrival, the president of the court’s oversight body wrote to the government in Hungary reminding it of its “specific obligation to comply with requests from the court for arrest and surrender.”

A spokesperson for the ICC declined to comment on the non-compliance proceedings.

Hungary’s decision to leave the ICC, a process that will take at least a year to complete, will make it the sole non-signatory within the 27-member European Union. With 125 current signatory countries, only the Philippines and Burundi have ever withdrawn from the court as Hungary intends.

Hungary has until May 23 to submit evidence in its defense.