On first day of Russian invasion, Zelensky asked NATO to stop airstrikes but was rebuffed - The Times

Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has described as a "painful moment" the call of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2022, when he begged to close the skies over Ukraine. Stoltenberg said this in his memoirs, quoted by the Times.

He said Zelensky called from a bunker in Kiev, where Russian troops were advancing, and pleaded: "Don't let Russian planes, drones and helicopters attack us." The Ukrainian pedestrian emphasised in the call that NATO had closed airspace before and was capable of doing so again.

But Stoltenberg was forced to refuse: "If we shoot down Russian planes, we automatically go to war with Russia. We are not ready for that. As Biden said, we will not risk a third world war for the sake of Ukraine."

The former NATO secretary-general added that he was afraid that this call might be Zelensky's last, but he believes that the decision not to deploy NATO troops was the right one. At the same time, he admitted that Western assistance to Ukraine "was too little and too late".

Stoltenberg also noted that with sufficient support from Kiev, a full-scale invasion could have been avoided: Putin might have realised that an attack on an armed Ukraine was impossible.