6주차｜국제 정치·외교_이정석_편집본_Volodymyr Zelenskyy: 2025 Address to the United Na

[이정석]

Title	Volodymyr Zelenskyy: 2025 Address to the United Nations General Assembly (text-video)
Speaker	Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Date	SEP 24, 2025
Event	2025 United Nations General Assembly
Words	764
Link	Volodymyr Zelenskyy: 2025 Address to the United Nations General Assembly (text-video)

1	shaheds	샤헤드 드론
2	The UN Charter	유엔헌장
3	The Universal Declaration of Human Rights	유엔인권선언
4	dead zone	데드존(음차) 혹은 무인지대
5	Warhead	(미사일) 탄두

Dear leaders!

Dear friends and all those who can become our friends – because you want safety and peace just as much as we do.

Today, no one but ourselves can guarantee security. Only strong alliances. Only strong partners. And only our own weapons. The 21st century isn’t much different from the past. If a nation wants peace, it still has to work on weapons. It’s sick – but that’s the reality. Not international law, not cooperation – weapons decide who survives.

Excellencies!

You know perfectly well – international law doesn’t work fully unless you have powerful friends who are truly willing to stand up for it. And even that doesn’t work without weapons. It’s terrible, but without it, things would be even worse. There are no security guarantees except friends and weapons.

Nations can speak about their pain from stages like this, but even during bloodshed, there isn’t a single international institution that can truly stop it. That’s how weak these institutions have become.

And for years, there have been no real answers to other threats either – chemical weapons, and famine used as a weapon.

Even being part of a long-standing military alliance doesn’t automatically mean you’re safe. Just recently, 19 simply built Russian drones violated Polish airspace. And only 4 were shot down. Luckily, they weren’t “shaheds” or even worse. Otherwise, the results would’ve been horrific.

We must not forget about protecting the rights of people – and the rights of nations – in regions where these rights are under threat. The UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights must apply everywhere. But it is all about the collapse of international law and the weakness of the international institutions. And so it’s about the rise of weapons. Weapons decide who survives.

And almost every day, when we open the news, we see headlines about violent attacks – happening all around the world. Most of it is done with weapons people are already used to. But weapons are evolving faster than our ability to defend ourselves.

Now, there are tens of thousands of people who know how to professionally kill using drones. Stopping that kind of attack is harder than stopping any gun, knife, or bomb. This is what Russia has brought with its war.

It used to be that only the strongest countries could use drones – because they were expensive and complex. Now, even simple drones can fly thousands of kilometers. War tech doesn’t care about geography anymore – it’s now reshaping it.

Just recently, airports in Europe had to shut down because of drones. Authorities couldn’t even say what kind of drones they were, who sent them, or from where.

We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history – because this time, it includes artificial intelligence. And if there are no real security guarantees – except friends and weapons, and if the world can’t respond even to old threats, and if there’s no strong platform for international security – will there be any place left on Earth that’s still safe for people?

We need global rules – now – for how AI can be used in weapons. And this is just as urgent as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

We need to restore international cooperation – real, working cooperation – for peace and for security. A few years from now might already be too late.

10 years ago, war looked different. No one imagined that cheap drones could create “dead zones”, areas stretching for dozens of kilometers where nothing moves, no vehicles, no life. People used to imagine that only after a nuclear strike – now it’s drone reality. Mass-produced, simple drones, and without AI – yet.

And every year that this war goes on, weapons become even more deadly. And only Russia deserves to be blamed for this.

To protect lives, Ukraine builds underground schools and underground hospitals. To protect lives, we have to spend more on protecting power stations from drone and missile attacks than on building sports facilities or cultural infrastructure, and that challenge is far greater than climate change. Russia’s war has put us in this situation. But do you have protection against similar threats?

The facts are simple: stopping this war now – and with it, the global arms race – is cheaper than building underground kindergartens or massive bunkers for critical infrastructure later.

Stopping Putin now is cheaper than trying to protect every port and every ship from terrorists with sea drones.

Stopping Russia now is cheaper than wondering who will be the first to create a simple drone carrying a nuclear warhead.

So we must use everything we have – together – to force the aggressor to stop.