At the United Nations, a Wartime President Warns the World: “Weapons and Friends”
On a cool autumn morning in New York, the General Assembly chamber felt oddly small for the magnitude of the conversation inside it. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, stood again before the world — his fourth address as a wartime leader — and offered a message that was less a diplomatic appeal and more a wake-up call: global security today rests on two uncomfortable pillars, he said, “weapons and friends.”
It was not a flourish but a diagnosis. “We are living through the most destructive arms race in human history,” he told the hall, his voice steady but urgent, “because this time, it includes artificial intelligence.” The image of history repeating itself — but with machine intelligence at the center — hung in the air like static.
The New Geometry of War: Cheap Drones, Long Shadows
Zelensky’s words were part policy briefing, part testimony. He sketched a new face of conflict: cheap, mass-produced drones turning wide swathes of land into “dead zones,” places where no one drives, where fields remain fallow, where life grows wary. “Ten years ago,” he said, “war looked different. No one imagined drones could create areas stretching dozens of kilometres where nothing moves.”
Across the world, analysts nod. Small commercial drones—modified, weaponised, networked—have altered the equation for both attackers and defenders. The barrier to entry is lower than ever: a laptop, an autopilot chip, a cheap airframe, and suddenly a battlefield is awash with dozens or hundreds of autonomous or semi-autonomous flying weapons.
“We’ve seen the democratisation of firepower,” said Dr. Laila Hassan, a defence analyst who studies unmanned systems. “When the technology that used to be exclusive to states becomes affordable, the strategic calculus changes. Non-state actors and smaller militaries can project force in asymmetric ways, and AI accelerates that process.”
“Stop Them Now”—A Stark Economic & Moral Argument
Zelensky did not mince words about the stakes. “Stopping Russia now is cheaper than wondering who will be the force to create a simple drone carrying a nuclear warhead,” he told delegates, a line that landed like a cold splash. His argument cut two ways: there is an economic logic to decisive resistance, and a moral case for preventing a cascade of weapon innovation that could slip beyond control.
He also unveiled a pragmatic response: Ukraine has become, by necessity, a laboratory of improvised defence technology. From volunteer workshops in Kyiv to university labs, Ukrainians have retooled commercial drones into reconnaissance platforms and loitering munitions. “We don’t parade big missiles,” he said. “We build drones to protect our right to life.”
Later in the speech, he suggested an even bolder policy: Ukraine is willing to share its weapons technology with friendly nations, arguing that systems tested in real war could provide “modern security” to others when global institutions falter.
Diplomacy on the Sidelines: Trump’s Shift and the Kremlin’s Reply
The chamber’s drama was shadowed by a presidential sidebar. Zelensky met Donald Trump on the margins of the UN summit, and within hours the US president posted that he believed Ukraine could reclaim every inch of territory taken by Russia. For a leader whose public stance has swung dramatically on the war, that social media moment was read as a pivot.
Back in Moscow, pressure valves hissed. The Kremlin rejected the idea that Ukraine can retake lost ground. “The idea that Ukraine can recapture something is, from our point of view, mistaken,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, wrapping the rebuttal in carefully measured rhetoric. When Mr Trump described Russia as a “paper tiger,” the Kremlin bristled, likening the nation instead to a bear — a metaphor designed to signal endurance and strength.
That exchange underscores a broader strategic impasse. Russia still controls roughly one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014. The conflict has left a devastating tally: tens of thousands dead, damaged cities and towns across the east and south, and millions forced to flee—registered refugee figures have numbered in the millions, with several million more internally displaced.
On the Ground: Kyiv’s Cautious Hope and Wearied Skepticism
In Kyiv’s coffee shops and volunteer hubs, people parsed the UN drama with a mix of hope and weary realism. “A single tweet won’t fill the holes in our roofs,” said Bogdan Tkachuk, 33, a volunteer coordinator handing out thermal blankets near a makeshift shelter. “We need weapons, yes. But we also need long-term commitments — training, munitions, repair parts.”
Svitlana Fetisova, a teacher who fled a village near Donetsk and now volunteers teaching children, was blunter. “Words are cheap. We hear promises, we see ceremonies, but our kids sleep in basements and study over Zoom,” she said. “If leaders mean it, let them make it concrete.”
Beyond Borders: AI, Arms Races, and the Fragility of Institutions
Read through Zelensky’s appeal and an uncomfortably modern pattern emerges: nations are stuck between two imperfect choices. Rely on international law and institutions that may lack teeth, or invest in the means of coercion and deterrence. “International law doesn’t work fully unless you have powerful friends willing to stand up for it,” Zelensky told the Assembly. “Even that doesn’t work without weapons.”
That calculus raises global questions. What happens when AI lowers decision times and increases the autonomy of lethal systems? How do you prevent accidental escalation when both sides deploy autonomous sensors and machine-guided missiles? And who regulates the spread of military-grade AI when it can be assembled from off-the-shelf parts?
“We are at a crossroads,” said Professor Elena Markovic, who researches international security. “Either we use the next years to build norms, verification mechanisms and restraint, or we allow a diffuse arms race to proceed unchecked, and then the cost is not just geopolitical — it’s existential.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
As readers, what should we carry away from a speech that combined stark warnings with military realities? For some, the lesson is immediate: the pillars of peace are fraying, and new technologies make those fractures faster and deeper. For others, it is a call to activism: demand more robust multilateral responses, fund humanitarian corridors, push for treaties on autonomous weapons.
There’s no easy answer. But the questions are now public and urgent: can the world revive institutions with the strength to restrain an accelerating arms race? Can democratic publics find the political will to marshal both the friends and the hardware Zelensky says are necessary?
Walking out of the UN, the city’s noise returned — taxi horns, a street vendor calling out, the smell of roasted chestnuts somewhere nearby — and the global emergency felt, for a moment, unbearably intimate. The choices made in the coming months will ripple far beyond Kyiv, Moscow or Washington. They will shape whether this century’s conflicts are managed by law and diplomacy, or by a terrifying new industrialisation of violence.
Which future do we want to build? And who among us will insist on it?
