(Bloomberg) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed annoyance that details of requests he made to the White House for more US long-range missiles were leaked to the media.
Reports about Ukraine requesting “a lot of missiles, like Tomahawks” appeared around the time he sought to persuade partners to support Ukraine’s ‘victory plan’, Zelenskiy said at a meeting with journalists from Nordic countries on Tuesday. A video of his comments was published on his Telegram channel.
“It was confidential information between Ukraine and the White House,” Zelenskiy said. “So it means between partners there are no confidential things.”
Zelenskiy asked the US for Tomahawk missiles as part of “non-nuclear deterrence package”, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing a senior US official who called the request “totally unfeasible”.
The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly asked the US to provide his military with long-range weapons in a bid to stem Russia’s ability to wage its large-scale war. Zelenskiy said “some partners” are worried that granting them would cross Moscow’s “red lines.”
“It means that we can defend our land only when they destroy our land, when they are already on our land, when they occupied our land, when they already killed our children or are trying to do so,” Zelenskiy told the Nordic journalists.
Moscow is expected to deploy about 12,000 North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine, and some 3,000 North Korean soldiers are already on Russian territory, Zelenskiy said.
His claims about North Korean troops couldn’t be independently verified. Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t confirmed or denied the presence of North Korean troops in his country, though the US and South Korea have said Pyongyang is sending thousands of soldiers to bolster his forces.
Zelenskiy doubted whether western partners’ responses were decisive enough to deter Putin from escalating the situation further.
“What will we do if 100,000 North Korean soldiers come?” he asked.
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