Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky keeps asking Westerners to set up a no-fly zone over Ukraine. What is it about ?
“We repeat it every day, close the skies above Ukraine… Create an aerial humanitarian zone, without rockets, without bombs.”
In a video posted on his Twitter account this Sunday, the Ukrainian president once again asked his partners to set up a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Breaking! pic.twitter.com/VCL5mpOVMi
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 6, 2022
The objective: to protect Ukrainian airspace so that only authorized aircraft can enter it, and thus put an end to Russian bombardments on Ukrainian cities.
NATO refuses
Hammered for several days, the request has still not found an echo with Westerners, for whom the maneuver is too dangerous.
According to NATO, the implementation of an exclusive air zone would make a direct confrontation with the Russians inevitable. “The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter jets into Ukrainian airspace and then shoot down Russian jets to enforce it,” he said. explained Friday Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the alliance.
However, since the beginning of the crisis, NATO has made it a point of honor never to find itself in direct contact with the Russian army. Otherwise, “we could end up with an all-out war in Europe,” warned Jens Stoltenberg.
examples from the past
However, such a measure has already existed in the past. The United States and its coalition partners had thus decreed two no-fly zones in Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991, to protect the Kurdish and Shiite populations of the country.
Two no-fly zones were also set up by decision of the UN: over Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993 and over Libya in 2011.
Noting that his request remained a dead letter, Volodymyr Zelensky asked Westerners to deliver planes to Ukraine to put an end to Russian hegemony in the Ukrainian skies.
“If you don’t, if you don’t at least give us planes so that we can protect ourselves, we can only draw one conclusion: you too want us to be killed slowly,” he said. he stated in his video.
