What President Zelensky Said in 12 Minutes to a Parliament 8,193 Kilometers Away

At 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 23, 2022, members of both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors gathered in the International Conference Room of the House of Representatives’ No. 1 Members’ Office Building. The person who addressed them online was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was the 28th day since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

According to the record of the House of Representatives’ internet proceedings broadcast, the speech lasted 12 minutes. This article looks, from the provisional translation of the speech text the House of Representatives published, at what the president said in those 12 minutes and what he asked of Japan. President Zelensky’s background is covered in our article on President Zelensky’s background.

Three Weeks Earlier, the House of Representatives Had Already Adopted a Resolution

As a backdrop to the speech, Japan’s Diet had already stated its position. The House of Representatives passed a “Resolution Condemning Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine” at its plenary session on March 1, 2022. The resolution called Russia’s actions “a serious violation of the international law prohibiting the use of force, and a grave violation of the UN Charter,” and stated the following.

This House condemns, in the strongest terms, the aggression by Russian forces. And it strongly urges Russia to immediately halt its attacks and withdraw its forces into Russian territory.

“Resolution Condemning Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine” (208th Diet Session, Resolution No. 3, House of Representatives plenary session, March 1, 2022)

The resolution called on the government to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in Ukraine and to “respond to the situation swiftly and strictly, including through sanctions,” in coordination with the international community. At the start of the speech, House of Representatives Speaker Hiroyuki Hosoda also referred to this resolution, stating that Japan’s Diet “stands with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”

In the Members’ Office Building, Not the Plenary Chamber

The speech was not held as a plenary session of the House of Representatives or the House of Councillors. The venue was the International Conference Room and the multipurpose hall of the House of Representatives’ No. 1 Members’ Office Building, and the House of Representatives’ announcement gives the event’s name as “Address to the Diet (Online) by Ukrainian President Zelensky.”

According to Speaker Hosoda’s remarks, the venue was attended by House of Councillors President Shoko Santo, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, House of Representatives Vice-Speaker Kaieda, House of Councillors Vice-President Ogawa, and many other members of both houses. The list of speakers in the proceedings broadcast gives the following order.

The speech text the House of Representatives published is a provisional Japanese translation the House of Representatives Secretariat made from the English translation posted on the website of the President of Ukraine’s Office. The quotations below follow this provisional translation. Place names within the provisional translation are kept as they appeared at the time (“Chernobyl,” a different spelling of “Zaporizhzhia,” “Sumy,” and so on — this publication writes Chornobyl, Zaporizhzhia, and Sumy in its own preferred forms). The background to the Japanese government changing “Kiev” to “Kyiv” is covered in our article on the spelling of place names.

It Began With the 8,193-Kilometer Distance

The president began by talking about the distance between the two countries.

Our two capitals are separated by 8,193 kilometers. Depending on the route, it takes, on average, 15 hours by air. And yet, what distance can there really be to our feelings about freedom, our desire to survive, and our hope for peace?

Address to the Diet (Online) by Ukrainian President Zelensky, provisional Japanese translation by the House of Representatives Secretariat

He went on to express gratitude that Japan “immediately came to our aid” on February 24, and said Japan had “become a leader in this position in Asia.”

Nuclear Plants and Chemical Weapons

Much of the first half of the speech was devoted to the danger of nuclear power plants. The president first explained the Chornobyl plant, where an accident occurred in 1986. In the course of dealing with the accident, thousands of tonnes of contaminated material, debris, and vehicles were buried in the forest within the 30-kilometer exclusion zone. On February 24, Russian armored vehicles drove through that land, kicking up radioactive dust into the air. Russia is using this zone to mount new attacks on Ukraine’s defense forces — that was the substance of what he said.

He went on to state that Ukraine has 4 operating nuclear plants with 15 reactors, all of them under threat from Russia, and cited Russian forces having already attacked “the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.” He also touched on an ammonia leak from an attack on a chemical plant in Sumy region, warnings of a possible attack with a chemical weapon such as sarin (rendered in the provisional translation as “something similar to what happened in Syria”), and the need for the world’s political leaders to discuss how to respond if Russia uses nuclear weapons.

The text of the provisional translation contains no passage naming the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The mention of sarin, too, comes up only as the Syria example.

The Figures the President Cited

The speech includes several figures on the damage as of that time. All of them are what the president stated in his speech of March 23, 2022, and this article has not cross-checked them against other sources.

• The Ukrainian military has been defending the homeland for 28 days
• Russia has fired more than 1,000 missiles into Ukraine’s peaceful towns
• Thousands have been killed, 121 of them children
• About 9 million people have fled Russian forces and been forced to leave their homes
• Russia has blockaded the sea that is Ukraine’s trade route

The Five Things He Asked of Japan

In the second half of the speech, the president laid out specific requests to Japan. Drawing from the provisional translation, they are as follows.

On international organizations too, he said the UN and the Security Council had failed to function, stating, “Reform is needed. An injection of integrity is needed.” He argued that a new security framework absolutely cannot be built on the existing system, and that a new system is needed that responds to any aggression “preventively and forcefully.”

It Closed With a Story About an Audiobook

Near the end of the speech, the president turned to Japanese culture. He recounted that in 2019, about six months after he took office, his wife Olena took part in producing an audiobook for visually impaired children, recording, in Ukrainian, a Japanese fairy tale. The president called this “just a small part” of Ukrainians’ interest in Japanese culture.

The end of the provisional translation shows him saying “thank you” in both Ukrainian and Japanese, and closes with “Glory to Ukraine!” and “Glory to Japan!” After the speech, House of Councillors President Santo referred to having received the president’s visit at the 2019 Enthronement Ceremony, and said Japan’s Diet members would also do their utmost.

Afterward

The sanctions requested in the speech have continued since, and on reconstruction, the “Japan-Ukraine Conference for Promotion of Economic Reconstruction” was held in Tokyo on February 19, 2024. The documents exchanged at that conference and what followed are summarized in our article on the 56 cooperation documents unveiled in Tokyo, and the course of Japan-Ukraine relations in our Japan-Ukraine timeline.