'Move the Commons, quote Churchill': Andrew Marr on Zelenskyy's speech

8 March 2022, 18:20 | Updated: 8 March 2022, 18:33

Andrew Marr's response to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to Commons

Andrew Marr reacts to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's emotional speech in the Commons, saying he won MPs over with his Shakespeare and Churchill references.

It followed a historic address by the Ukrainian president in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

"If you really want to move the House of Commons, quote Shakespeare and quote Churchill," Andrew said on LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr.

He said: "MPs have rarely sounded as united and emotional as they did this afternoon, following President Zelenskyy's address.

"Like all great speakers, the Ukrainian president knows his audience.

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"And this afternoon, after a harrowing account of what his country has suffered, he chose in the House of Commons to channel Winston Churchill in 1940."

Mr Zelenskyy asked in the Commons whether Ukraine was "to be or not to be" following the invasion, firmly stating it is "Yes! To be."

He later echoed lines by Churchill from the Second World War, where he said: "We will not give up and we will not lose."

"What [Mr Zelenskyy] wanted alongside military supplies and embargoes was, above all, air cover...but on air cover, however passionate the applause, answer came there none," Andrew went on to say.

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Western leaders have repeatedly refused a no-fly zone amid concerns it could lead into a Third World War.

However, Mr Zelenskyy has referred back to the 1994 Budapest memorandum, after Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in favour of a set of security guarantees.