Volodymyr Zelenskyy used day two of the 80th United Nations General Assembly to recast Ukraine’s war as a test of the international system’s capacity to protect states and civilians beyond Europe. He argued that in today’s security environment, weapons determine survival because international law functions only when enforced by capable partners.
Framing Russia’s invasion as the generator of a broader arms race—now accelerated by artificial intelligence—he warned that without credible, workable security guarantees “for everyone,” the world risks normalizing a twenty-first-century “survival of the fittest.” He tied these claims to lived consequences: underground schools and hospitals in Ukraine, farmers adapting equipment to drone threats, and continuing Russian shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. He cited the abduction of Ukrainian children and incidents spilling into NATO states, arguing that alliance membership alone does not guarantee safety.
The appeal was explicitly universalist—Zelenskyy name-checked conflicts and fragilities from Georgia and Moldova to Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria—while remaining prescriptive: apply pressure on Moscow, supply the means to stop aggression now, and cut the economic lifelines that make continued violence possible. He thanked the U.S. president for a recent expression of support and, with characteristic directness, told delegates that silence sustains the war. Ukraine, he said, is “only the first” if rules and guarantees fail.
Moscow offered a mirror image. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected the U.S. president’s assertion that Ukraine could recover all occupied territory, insisted Russia’s economy can sustain its armed forces, and said there is “no alternative” to continuing operations to achieve objectives set in 2022. He dismissed any near-term Russia–U.S. thaw as “very sluggish,” with “effectiveness … close to zero,” and swatted aside the “paper tiger” label by recasting Russia as a “bear.” The message was continuity: the war proceeds, and Moscow claims advances along the front.
The U.S. president’s own UN address became a second thread running through European reactions. In a combative speech critical of Europe’s migration, climate, and energy policies—delivered, as analysts noted, largely for a domestic audience—he nonetheless pivoted hours later to declare that Ukraine could regain its land and that NATO should shoot down Russian aircraft violating allied airspace. Berlin read the tonal shift as an opening to press tighter sanctions against Russia, while Kyiv welcomed the rhetorical backing even as seasoned observers cautioned that victory would require more than words: significantly greater Western materiel or a highly improbable transformation inside Russia.
European leaders used their UN platforms to link Ukraine’s defence to the integrity of the rules-based order. Spain’s King Felipe VI paired an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s terrorism and Israel’s right to self-defence with an unusually direct call to “stop this massacre now” in Gaza, demand for full humanitarian access, and a renewed push for a two-state outcome. Anticipating accusations of antisemitism, he situated Spain’s position within the country’s Sephardic history, recalling the 2015 law granting citizenship to descendants of Jews expelled in 1492. He also highlighted pragmatic European cooperation by praising the EU–UK understanding on Gibraltar, which Madrid says respects Spain’s sovereignty position while providing legal certainty for border communities.
Czech president Petr Pavel warned that looking away from Ukraine “green-lights” future aggressors anywhere and described a security landscape shaped by Russia’s attacks on civilians and infrastructure, hybrid operations across Europe, and a sanctions-evading ecosystem supported by partners including China, Iran, and North Korea. In Berlin, German chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Bundestag that foreign and domestic policy can no longer be separated, urging swift reforms on tax, investment, energy prices, and administrative burden, and arguing for pragmatic climate policy that preserves industrial competitiveness in automotive, steel, chemicals, and aviation.
Events in European airspace showed the ambient risk environment. Spain reported a GPS “disturbance” affecting a military aircraft carrying defence minister Margarita Robles over the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad en route to Lithuania; the flight continued safely using encrypted and military navigation systems. Spanish and NATO officials described such incidents—impacting both civilian and military flights near Kaliningrad—as increasingly common, an assessment echoed by recent reports of jamming affecting a plane carrying the European Commission president in the Balkans. Separately, UK authorities arrested a man in connection with a cyberattack that had disrupted airport operations in several European capitals, a reminder that coercion below the threshold of armed conflict can produce outsized public effects.
The day’s interventions and incidents converged on a single diagnosis. Whether in Ukraine’s trenches, Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe, the Baltic skies, or Europe’s critical infrastructures, the perceived erosion of enforceable rules invites risk to spill across borders. Zelenskyy’s speech attempted to widen the coalition for deterrence by casting security as a shared right rather than a privilege of the well-armed. European leaders tried to keep both principles and pragmatism in view: defend Ukraine and international law, mitigate humanitarian disaster, harden societies against hybrid threats, and adjust domestic policy to sustain the means of action. The strategic question left hanging was not whether words matter—they do, and they set direction—but whether the instruments that give them force will follow at the speed that today’s threats demand.
Gros News 
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